If I’d had my way, I wouldn’t ever have thought about the D.R., but in my household there was no escaping it. Those were the early years of our immigration, when my mother still kept up with the news back home. Every morning without fail, before I even had a chance to brush my teeth, she had me tune my father’s beloved radio to the Spanish stations. And, because I was the curious kid I was, I listened, and, because I couldn’t help myself, I learned.
Maybe it was the stations we were tuning in to, but they made it sound like the D.R. was on a rocket to hell. Nothing was going right: nobody had jobs and there were strikes every day and food shortages and super-sensational murders and politicians accusing one another of all sorts of lunacies. As if that weren’t apocalypse enough, this was a few months after Hurricane David more or less dropped the island on its fucking head, leaving thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless, and entire neighborhoods blown to splinters. Forty-plus years later and you still have Domos who can’t hear the name David without breaking out in hives.
Here was the weirdness: it didn’t matter whether the radio was talking about the annihilation of David or some grisly-ass twenty-person bus collision, my mother never reacted. Not with her face or with her words. Just kept folding clothes or washing peas, her thin I-starved-throughout-my-childhood face pinched inward. It was a kind of passivity that I didn’t understand. Why was she listening to the news if she wasn’t going to react?
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin November 06, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin November 06, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.