The Hugh Grant Guy
“The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” begins with an image straight out of bad Hugh Grant romantic comedy. Cofer is on a bus in London when a young inebriated man, spotting her dark Latina looks, bends down on one knees and begins singing the love aria from West Side Story, “Maria.” This grand but misplaced romantic gesture is the impetus for the essay’s articulation on stereotyping.
The Landlord
“Silent Dancing” features a character who if it were a movie would be considered little more than a cameo, but the sting of his appearance sticks. She is recalling the days when her father first began looking for a place to move his family in Paterson, New Jersey. He is unnamed and of no particular individuality, he is just one of many landlords representative of mob mentality. He takes a look at Cofer’s father asks if he his Cuban to which the Puerto Rican-born man responds with the obvious answer. The landlord responds by closing the door in his face, but not before suggesting it is the same thing, although he uses less intellectually informed language than “thing.”
Mamá
Though referred to as Mamá this character is actually Cofer’s grandmother in the essay “Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood.” It is in the Mamá’s living room that the ritualistic “cafe con leche” takes place every afternoon. It is a rite in which the women of the author’s family gather to swap stories and discuss what it means to be a Puerto Rican woman with the assurance that at that time—three or four in the afternoon—the young girls will be home from school and doing their best to eavesdrop on the conversation. It is a rite for passing on knowledge and experience down through the generations.
Sister Rosetta
“My Rosetta” is one of those stories about a teacher who changed everything for a student. The student, of course, is Julia Ortiz Cofer. The teacher is a nun, Sister Rosetta, who had a face that “belonged on an Irish guy with a tough job.” But as a result of introducing Cofer and her fellow students to everything from folk music to Eastern philosophy, Sister Rosetta “transformed herself into the most attractive person I knew.”
