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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Puerto Ricans always make fun of Dominicans, which is stupid because we’re all in the same brown boat, but some boricuas feel superior to them even though we’re second-class citizens from a colony where we can’t vote in US elections.
Las gallinas de arriba se cagan en las de abajo, pero todas son gallinas, my abuela used to say.
“¿En serio, cabrón?”
Puerto Rico isn’t the US. Here you become an adult the moment you get your driver’s license at sixteen, and the legal drinking age is eighteen, not twenty-one. Being a fucking colony is bad, but women can still get abortions without going to prison and we can drink earlier, so I guess we haven’t lost every battle.
Keyla, her housemate, worked at a clothing store at Plaza Las Américas during the day and shook her ass in reggaetón videos at night.
I didn’t want someone asking me if I had papers or saying people like me coming over was ruining their country. I didn’t want people mocking Natalia’s accent or mine. I didn’t want to deal with any of that shit.
Barrio Obrero’s bichote, a man with a lot of power. Someone who was already on the level.
La Perla was a place with its own rules, and no one would dare come into it to pull anything like what we were about to pull.
Last but not least, thank you once again to mi tierra, Puerto Rico. This book came from you and is for you, Borikén. It’s from and for your beaches and hot nights and amazing art and hurricanes and strength. Yo, como Juan Antonio Corretjer, sería borincano aunque naciera en la luna.
