In Search Of Puerto Rican Identity In Small-Town America

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Puerto Ricans are migrants not immigrants, Spanish and English, domestic yet foreign — as we like to say on Code Switch, it's complicated. A hundred years ago this week, Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens by law with the passing of the Jones Act. Since then, they've had a complicated and fraught relationship with what it means to be American. Shereen traveled to Holyoke, Massachusetts to explore what the Jones Act has meant to Puerto Rican identity on stateside in the last century. Holyoke has the highest ration of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. - nearly 50% of residents there have Puerto Rican heritage. An earlier version of this podcast stated that Myriam Quiñonez has three children. She has two.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's good job you're listening to Code Switch.
0:01.7	I'm Jean Demby.
0:02.5	And I'm Shrine Madiselle Mirage.
0:03.8	Is that a poem?
0:04.5	Thank you very much.
0:05.2	It's good to be back.
0:06.1	It's so good to see you.
0:06.6	We're in the same studio.
0:07.6	Yes, we're actually looking into each other's eyes.
0:09.8	We've never actually been in the same studio.
0:11.7	I know.
0:12.0	We haven't done that.
0:13.3	So yes, this is the first time we're standing up.
0:16.7	So if you want to get a visual of that.
0:18.5	Shrine is doing the running man.
0:19.4	Yes, I'm doing the running man.
0:20.5	As we speak, I'm gesticulating wildly like a Puerto Rican.
0:25.1	And that's what we're going to be talking about today.
0:26.8	Is it?
0:27.5	Yes.
0:28.2	Puerto Rico.
0:29.9	Anyway.
	...

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