Alisa: A Story of Race, Sex, Class, and Shame

On October 31 st , 1990 I lost my “blackface virginity” (if only I had popped other cherries at the proper time.) And I got high on the shoe polish fumes too! Mom and dad took us trick or treating through the Governor’s Crossing development, a bourgy area of proto-McMansions. Kayla, born to blend into the background, wore a drab witch costume. The white people who opened their doors enjoyed my full-blackface minstrelsy just as much as paranoid black nationalists would have suspected. Critical acclaim for my blackface Urkel! “Oh, honey,” said some white man or another. “You have to come here and see this one! Look who he is!” “Oh my goodness! That is hilarious! Can you say ‘Did I do that’?” I pushed down my glasses and uttered “Did I do that?” “Oh, that’s great. Take some extra candy! As much as you want! Your costume made our night!” Kayla did not receive any extra candy. The mediocrity. We covered most of Governor’s Crossing. After my sister and I filled o...

            Boricua Monomania. Or even just Latina Monomania (they didn’t have to be Boricua, though Boricuas were my favorite Latina ethnic group.) The ecstatic siren song of my life (and I would never have it any other way.) Almost anything other than them was/is superfluous. Some people like money or fast cars? Ha!             Let us now fully examine the roots of this Boricua/Latina Monomania; the latent seed sprouted from the most unlikely soil: that fat “Mexican” from my Sophomore Math class.   For the purposes of this “Dendrology/Genealogy of Boricua Monomania,” we must travel back further still to the Fall of 1990. M.C. Hammer ruled the charts and Broccoli-hater George H.W. Bush waged his NeoCon war against Saddam Hussein. I didn’t eat broccoli either. I preferred the collar of my shirt, just as a nervous dog prefers its own neck. Saliva withered the coll...