Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere, Robert Lopez
Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere, Robert Lopez
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Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere
An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure

Author: Robert Lopez

Narrator: Lee Osorio

Unabridged: 5 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/28/2023

Synopsis

Robert Lopez's grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, in 1904, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York, Brooklyn, until his death in 1987. The family's efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage, culture, and language within two generations.

Little is known of Sixto—he may have been a longshoreman, a painter, or a boxer, but was most likely a longshoreman—or why he originally decided to leave Puerto Rico, other than that he was a meticulously slow eater who played the standup keyboard and guitar, and enjoyed watching baseball. Through family recollection, the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyn's diverse tennis community, as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from Sixto's remembered traits, in Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure, Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present, and reclaim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure.

About Robert Lopez

Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River, named one of twenty-five important books of the decade by HTML Giant, and All Back Full; two story collections, Asunder and Good People, and a novel-in-stories titled A Better Class of People. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, the Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, the Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction-Latino. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ray on May 04, 2023

reading this book was like taking a guided meditation by a man who is very bothered by not talking to his grandfather very much who has some sort of compulsion about tennis shots. enjoyable......more

Goodreads review by sofia on October 06, 2023

Maybe 3.5? I have a hard time with books by men, especially memoirs. However, a lot of this resonated with me, in particular the moments where Lopez expresses guilt and feelings of loss about language and assimilation. His romanticization of the idea of knowing one’s history and family lore spoke to......more

Goodreads review by Zarmeena on August 29, 2024

I picked up this book hoping to learn more about Puerto Rican life in America, but I don't think I was prepared for the assimilated-American perspective it offered (I probably should've read the synopsis more carefully). But perhaps that's the whole point. It's rare to find a book that feels simulta......more

Goodreads review by Kim on May 27, 2024

As a reader, one of my favorite nonfiction forms is the braided essay. I love the recurring themes, surprise juxtapositions, the sense of being on the journey inside the skin of the author as they make their way toward some new understanding of their place in relationship to the subject matter and t......more

Goodreads review by Lindor on October 15, 2023

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I listened to the audio version and finished in about one week. I have always been anti assimilation. I think that differences should be acknowledged and celebrated. The same way each ingredient in a stew contributes to its complex and amazing flavor. Mr. Lopez touched......more

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