“You three are really going? Steve asks with a mouthful of broccoli. “What if she chops your titties off?” The rest of the kids around the lunch table bust out laughing.
“Shut up, Steve. What do you know about Santería?” I say.
That’s the problem with these Whitney School kids, all this education and you’d think they’d be less apt to make stupid ass comments. Me and Melo are the only ones from Spanish Harlem here and as much as they sweat us for being from there, it doesn’t stop them from lapsing into their privilege. And hanging around them so much, me and Melo sometimes participate. Melo more than me because she enjoys all this rich shit, but every day I have to go back home and smack myself back into reality.
Read the rest in SING THE TRUTH: THE KWELI JOURNAL SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Contributor Notes
I start stories with an idea. I don’t plan the whole story out, I don’t start with a character, I start with a small kernel of what the story is about, and this story first started with the idea of a girl going to a botanica because she wants love. As I revise (and revise), I apply more meaning to the story or more meanings inevitably start to surface. Now, “La Hija de Chango” is about how education can separate us from all that we previously knew; how we can feel so lost from our communities, and about how we struggle for love that probably isn’t meant for us.
This story is part of a larger collection I recently finished, Love War Stories. In this collection, many of the girls are trying to figure out what it means to be a woman and what it means to be in love. Clearly, these girls find truths they weren’t ready for.
Ivelisse Rodriguez was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and raised in Holyoke, MA. She holds a B.A. in English from Columbia, an MFA in Fiction from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. in English-Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Ivelisse’s stories have appeared in the Boston Review and Vandal, and one is forthcoming in the Bilingual Review.
She currently lives in Jersey City, NJ and is an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
