Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY x Cool People Do Cool Stuff - Pura Belpré: The Puerto Rican Librarian Who Brought Bilingual Storytelling to New York

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SMNTY x Cool People Do Cool Stuff - Pura Belpré: The Puerto Rican Librarian Who Brought Bilingual Storytelling to New York · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha. Welcome to stuff I
0:07
Speaker 1: never told you production by her too, and.
0:18
Speaker 2: Welcome to a very special crossover. Is that what we're
0:23
Speaker 2: gonna call the Sandy Yeah? Okay crossover. So, as you
0:28
Speaker 2: already know if you've been listening, I was a guest
0:31
Speaker 2: on Margaret Kiljoy's podcast called Cold People Who Did Cool Stuff,
0:36
Speaker 2: And this last time that I was on there, I
0:39
Speaker 2: got to hear the history of the Public Library and
0:42
Speaker 2: it was such a fascinating episode. I love these types
0:46
Speaker 2: of episode, and I've talked about it a few times,
0:48
Speaker 2: to the point that I think we've even talked about
0:50
Speaker 2: the native people's in Puerto Rico, the Tano, which is
0:54
Speaker 2: what we talked about a little bit on the episode.
0:57
Speaker 2: So I asked, UH if we could actually on our
1:01
Speaker 2: feed because I loved loved this episode so much, specifically
1:04
Speaker 2: part two, and it is titled Poora Belprey, the Puerto
1:09
Speaker 2: Rican Librarian who brought a bilingual storytelling to New York.
1:13
Speaker 2: So I really wanted y'all to be able to hear this,
1:16
Speaker 2: and you should. I also go back and listen to
1:18
Speaker 2: their first part of this episode because this is part two,
1:21
Speaker 2: but please, please, please, enjoy this crossover episode with myself
1:26
Speaker 2: and Margaret Kiljoy talking about this amazing person, Pura Belprey
1:33
Speaker 2: Cools Media.
1:36
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
1:38
Speaker 3: a weekly reminder that despite all the bad things that
1:41
Speaker 3: are happening, there's people who try to do things about
1:43
Speaker 3: the bad things that are happening. And I'm your host,
1:46
Speaker 3: Margaret Kiljoy and with me this week to talk about libraries.
1:50
Speaker 3: It's Samantha McVay. Hi, Hi, how are you.
1:54
Speaker 2: I'm great. Thanks for having me on again. I love
1:57
Speaker 2: being a part of the show.
1:58
Speaker 3: Yay, Yeah, Okay, I have a question. You're the host
2:02
Speaker 3: of stuff mom never told you? Correct, I don't know
2:04
Speaker 3: that your relationship with your own mother. Does your mom
2:06
Speaker 3: ever get mad about the implication that she never told
2:09
Speaker 3: you these things?
2:11
Speaker 2: So that's a loaded question. I don't have time. This
2:15
Speaker 2: is a real loaded question.
2:17
Speaker 3: Okay to this.
2:19
Speaker 2: When I told my mother I was quitting my social
2:22
Speaker 2: work job to become a podcaster, which, as you would expect,
2:26
Speaker 2: first thing was radio. What does that mean?
2:28
Speaker 4: Ye?
2:29
Speaker 2: That was that? And then it went into you know
2:32
Speaker 2: feminist show. Oh no, you've become one of those people
2:35
Speaker 2: who was ruining the world and that proceeded to a
2:38
Speaker 2: cry session and I was ignoring each other for a while.
2:40
Speaker 2: Better yet, speaking of libraries, I actually myself, my co host,
2:46
Speaker 2: recently wrote a book based on our show, Intersectional Feminism,
2:50
Speaker 2: and I have completely hidden that from my mother in
2:53
Speaker 2: fear of her being angry with me.
2:56
Speaker 3: Oh shit, I'm sorry that I brought it up. Thank
2:59
Speaker 3: you for your honesty about it.
3:01
Speaker 2: Anyway, loaded questions, But I will say, because my mother
3:07
Speaker 2: is absolutely against those things, there's a lot that my
3:10
Speaker 2: mother did not tell me.
3:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have a lot of material for the show.
3:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there you go.
3:15
Speaker 3: Mine would be the like, there's them. I think it's
3:18
Speaker 3: reductrous or something has a meme or headline or whatever
3:21
Speaker 3: of a you know, parent just accidentally forgot to mention
3:26
Speaker 3: that health issue they've been struggling with for forty years
3:29
Speaker 3: that runs in the family. Yeah, you know, I'm just like, whoops,
3:32
Speaker 3: never brought that one up.
3:34
Speaker 2: I can't add that to the trauma that I've endured
3:36
Speaker 2: because I'm adopted.
3:37
Speaker 3: So oh yeah, no, fair enough.
3:40
Speaker 2: There's so many loaded things that we're talking about. I
3:42
Speaker 2: apologize for the trauma dumping.
3:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, nope. Now I'm just gonna let me see if
3:46
Speaker 3: I can come up with another thing to accidentally bring
3:48
Speaker 3: up that.
3:49
Speaker 2: I uh as you can see I'm handling it well.
3:53
Speaker 2: You do great? Oh yeah.
3:55
Speaker 3: Sophie is our producer. Hi, Sophie.
3:58
Speaker 4: Hey.
4:00
Speaker 5: I was like when you asked that question, I was like, oh,
4:01
Speaker 5: I knows.
4:07
Speaker 2: She knows a little bit of trauma. We kind of
4:09
Speaker 2: bonded over it. I was like, listen noted questions. You
4:13
Speaker 2: can't come in with those types of questions as an intro.
4:17
Speaker 2: I love making an awkward presence.
4:19
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna come up with
4:21
Speaker 3: some even worse ones later. That's my plan. Our audio
4:24
Speaker 3: engineer is Rory Hi.
4:26
Speaker 4: Rory Hiroy Hello, sorry about the trauma dubbing on YouTube.
4:31
Speaker 3: Ar theme music was written for us by Unwoman and
4:34
Speaker 3: the main subject this week is New York and probably
4:38
Speaker 3: the US's first Puerto Rican librarian. She was an Afro
4:43
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican author and puppeteer and tri lingual hero named
4:46
Speaker 3: Puta Beppre and she is a fascinating subject. I couldn't
4:51
Speaker 3: find a biography on her, like a book length biography
4:54
Speaker 3: on her, but there's a lot of academic papers librarians.
4:58
Speaker 3: There's a lot of academic paper about her and a
5:01
Speaker 3: lot of like pop articles about her, so I put
5:03
Speaker 3: together the best that I can. Her name was the
5:07
Speaker 3: first one on the list that was given to me
5:10
Speaker 3: by a librarian at the conference this year, And yeah,
5:13
Speaker 3: I was gonna do them all, but it looks like
5:15
Speaker 3: I'm doing porhm and the rest will do it some
5:17
Speaker 3: other time. Poora Belprey was born on February second. Normally
5:24
Speaker 3: you'd say what year someone was born after you say
5:26
Speaker 3: the date. Who fucking knows what year she was born.
5:30
Speaker 3: Sources will claim eighteen ninety nine, nineteen oh one, nineteen
5:34
Speaker 3: oh two, and nineteen oh three. She claimed nineteen oh three,
5:38
Speaker 3: so I'm going to go with that one. I will
5:40
Speaker 3: let her self identify birth year. It's almost like weird, Well,
5:43
Speaker 3: they're supporting documents claiming other years, so it's not just
5:47
Speaker 3: a like we don't trust her or whatever.
5:48
Speaker 4: Right.
5:51
Speaker 3: She was generally reasonably cagey about her time in Puerto
5:54
Speaker 3: Rico as a kid, and which, you know whatever, Like
5:57
Speaker 3: no one needs to talk about their childhood unless the
5:59
Speaker 3: host of podcast brings it up rudely at the top
6:02
Speaker 3: of an episode, So like, she's not a public figure
6:05
Speaker 3: she's a librarian. You know, a lot of what is
6:08
Speaker 3: known about her are educated guesses. But she was one
6:12
Speaker 3: of five kids who grew up in a loving and
6:14
Speaker 3: religious family, most likely Catholic, but she didn't seem to
6:17
Speaker 3: write or talk much about religion as best as I
6:19
Speaker 3: can tell. She also seems to have written or talked
6:22
Speaker 3: very little about being black. We've talked about this before
6:26
Speaker 3: on the show, like on the episodes we did about
6:28
Speaker 3: the Young Lords, which is this Puerto Rican I guess
6:31
Speaker 3: called sort of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers, and that's fair,
6:34
Speaker 3: but also they're peers, so it's like, well, then the
6:37
Speaker 3: Black Panthers are the Black Young Lords whatever, you know? Right, Anyway,
6:43
Speaker 3: we talked about how Puerto Rican racial identity, at least
6:46
Speaker 3: historically looks really different than race looks in the continental US.
6:51
Speaker 3: So it's like, makes a lot of sense that she
6:53
Speaker 3: identifies strongly as Puerto Rican and that is mostly what
6:56
Speaker 3: she talked about. She later married a black man in
7:00
Speaker 3: regularly lived in black neighborhoods, but it seems that her
7:02
Speaker 3: identity was primarily Puerto Rican. What she did write and
7:07
Speaker 3: talk about was her connection to the legacy of Puerto
7:10
Speaker 3: Rican folklore. She wrote quote, I grew up in a
7:14
Speaker 3: home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed
7:17
Speaker 3: down by word of mouth for generations. As a child,
7:21
Speaker 3: I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I had heard.
7:25
Speaker 3: The characters became quite real to me. I remember during
7:28
Speaker 3: school recess that some of us would gather under the
7:30
Speaker 3: shade of the tamar d tree. There we would take
7:34
Speaker 3: turns telling stories. The best guess that people make it
7:38
Speaker 3: almost feels like ghoulish, the way that people write biographies,
7:41
Speaker 3: where you're like trying to dredge up this stuff that
7:43
Speaker 3: people clearly just didn't really want to talk about, and
7:45
Speaker 3: there's no reason that anyone should really care about the real,
7:48
Speaker 3: specific nitty gritty of the class upbringing of this you
7:51
Speaker 3: know person, But yeah, you know, here we are. The
7:56
Speaker 3: best guess is that she was in a family those
7:57
Speaker 3: sort of culturally middle class, but without money, right, without
8:01
Speaker 3: much money. Her father was a building contractor who moved
8:05
Speaker 3: the family around a lot for work, and she grew
8:07
Speaker 3: up speaking Spanish, English and French, and both of her
8:10
Speaker 3: parents were literate. Her older sister at Lease, taught in
8:14
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico for ten years before moving to New York City.
8:17
Speaker 3: This is one of the earlier waves of Puerto Rican
8:19
Speaker 3: movement into the US. And again, if you want to
8:21
Speaker 3: hear way more about that, listen to our episodes about
8:24
Speaker 3: the young lords. Porta graduated high school in nineteen nineteen,
8:28
Speaker 3: then started college at the University of Puerto Rico. But
8:32
Speaker 3: when Alise got married in nineteen twenty, the whole family
8:35
Speaker 3: traveled to New York City for the wedding and Poro
8:38
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm staying in New York
8:42
Speaker 3: And so she stayed in New York and at first
8:45
Speaker 3: she got work as a seamstress, which was one of
8:47
Speaker 3: the main jobs available to Puerto Rican immigrants at the time.
8:51
Speaker 3: But then in nineteen twenty one, she was hired by
8:54
Speaker 3: the Public Library of New York, which means I can
8:58
Speaker 3: introduce another hero of the episode, Ernestine Rose never met
9:03
Speaker 3: anyone named Ernestine. One day, I'm going to mean a
9:06
Speaker 3: trans woman named Ernestine, because trans women love to name
9:09
Speaker 3: ourselves like weird old timing names, said Margaret. And I
9:13
Speaker 3: definitely know some like Agatha's and you know, whatever, good name.
9:17
Speaker 3: I haven't met a Gertrude yet, but it'll happen, oh hope.
9:20
Speaker 3: So Ernestine Rose was named after Ernestine Rose, which made
9:27
Speaker 3: her hard to look up because it was a much
9:28
Speaker 3: more famous Ernestine Rose. The first Ernestine Rose was an
9:31
Speaker 3: abolitionist and suffragist who I don't know a ton about,
9:33
Speaker 3: but Wikipedia called her the first Jewish feminist, or rather
9:37
Speaker 3: Wikipedia's as that other people called her that, and who
9:40
Speaker 3: am I to argue with. I didn't read much about her.
9:44
Speaker 2: We're going to mark that, okay, I.
9:46
Speaker 3: Know, because it was like, you can only follow each
9:49
Speaker 3: rabbit hole like a couple steps, right, Ernestine Rose, the
9:53
Speaker 3: younger one is like the already the side character. And
9:57
Speaker 3: then I was like, now I'm gonna read about this.
9:58
Speaker 3: I'm like, wait a second, I doing I have to
10:01
Speaker 3: record at some point?
10:02
Speaker 2: You just chase after so many Yeah, how do you
10:06
Speaker 2: handle the like I have so many mini series episodes
10:12
Speaker 2: because it ends up being like I have a thought
10:14
Speaker 2: and then that thought turns into see, we did a
10:17
Speaker 2: whole religious trauma and I thought it might be two parter.
10:19
Speaker 2: It's thirteen parts all an hour long.
10:22
Speaker 3: Amazing. I really want to listen to that one.
10:25
Speaker 2: So it goes bad. I don't do well. I don't
10:27
Speaker 2: do well.
10:27
Speaker 3: How long ago? How far back?
10:30
Speaker 2: Last year, this year, last year, beginning of this year,
10:32
Speaker 2: because we were talking about just overall the new anti
10:37
Speaker 2: feminist movement and then talking about anti abortion movements and
10:40
Speaker 2: how it's very much rooted into religious trauma and white supremacy.
10:44
Speaker 2: So it became a whole thing, and then we went
10:46
Speaker 2: down so many rabbit holes. But it's specific honestly to
10:50
Speaker 2: American Baptists and like that, we don't even talk much
10:54
Speaker 2: about Catholicism. Like that's how deep we went in without
10:58
Speaker 2: going there.
10:59
Speaker 3: Amazing.
11:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a thing.
11:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So the answer is that you would also
11:04
Speaker 3: now be doing a whole side episode about Ernestine Rose
11:06
Speaker 3: one and Ernestine Rose two. I appreciate that you're.
11:09
Speaker 2: Doing better at controlling this and actually being really really
11:13
Speaker 2: like following through thanks, as opposed to myself, who I'm like,
11:19
Speaker 2: I can definitely do this in thirteen parts, let's go.
11:22
Speaker 2: So you're doing great.
11:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, i'much discipline. So our Ernestine that we're
11:28
Speaker 3: going to talk about the librarian Ernestine. We're going to
11:30
Speaker 3: call her Ernestine Junior, even though she isn't related to
11:33
Speaker 3: Ernestine Senior, just because it was funny to me. Both
11:37
Speaker 3: of them seemed cool as hell. Ernestine Junior is this
11:41
Speaker 3: white lady who may or may not have been Jewish.
11:43
Speaker 3: She apparently claimed she was Jewish, and then one historian
11:45
Speaker 3: I read disputes this. Who graduated from library school in
11:49
Speaker 3: nineteen oh five, making her one of the first bona
11:52
Speaker 3: fide librarians in the United States of America, and she
11:56
Speaker 3: hit the ground running to try and make libraries cooler.
12:00
Speaker 3: By nineteen oh eight, she was working hard to make
12:02
Speaker 3: sure that whatever library she was in was actually integrated
12:06
Speaker 3: into the ethnic community that it was part of. So
12:09
Speaker 3: that's like the big thing we're going to talk about,
12:12
Speaker 3: is integrating libraries into the communities that they're part of,
12:15
Speaker 3: instead of being sort of, you know, a place that
12:18
Speaker 3: shows up and is like everyone should think like these
12:20
Speaker 3: white people think. And at the beginning, this meant serving
12:25
Speaker 3: the Yiddish and Russian speaking Jewish community that she worked in,
12:29
Speaker 3: which is probably the community we've talked about a thousand
12:32
Speaker 3: times on this show because that's where all the weird
12:34
Speaker 3: the anarchists and communists from Russia were hanging out because
12:37
Speaker 3: they were all Yiddish speaking Jews in like the nineteen
12:41
Speaker 3: tens in New York City. And later she moved to
12:46
Speaker 3: Harlem to a black and Jewish community, and immediately started
12:50
Speaker 3: hiring non white people for the library, like Catherine Allen,
12:54
Speaker 3: a black woman. She also organized the nineteen twenty one
12:58
Speaker 3: exhibition of Quote Egro art at the library, which, according
13:02
Speaker 3: to author George Hutchinson Quote marked the beginning of the
13:06
Speaker 3: Harlem Renaissance in the visual arts. She made shit happen then,
13:12
Speaker 3: also in nineteen twenty one, she hired Poora Belprey because
13:16
Speaker 3: there was a sizable and growing Puerto Rican community in
13:19
Speaker 3: the neighborhood as well. She actually first tried to hire Alease,
13:23
Speaker 3: the sister who got married, but then Elise's husband told
13:27
Speaker 3: her she wasn't allowed to go get this job. It's
13:30
Speaker 3: like a throwaway line, like most of the things you
13:32
Speaker 3: read are like was offered to Elise who was busy
13:34
Speaker 3: and couldn't do it, And then you read the like
13:37
Speaker 3: slightly more in depth piece and is like her husband
13:39
Speaker 3: told her she couldn't, so she didn't.
13:41
Speaker 2: She wasn't allowed.
13:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, unlike Pora, who did not get married until she
13:45
Speaker 3: was forty, which is probably the better way to go
13:48
Speaker 3: about it in certain circumstances like an incredibly patriarchal culture,
13:52
Speaker 3: of the United States at the time, and so Pooro
13:56
Speaker 3: was hired as the Hispanic assistant, working in both the
14:00
Speaker 3: adult and children's rooms of the library. Her passion was
14:04
Speaker 3: clearly the children's room. This was the one hundred and
14:07
Speaker 3: thirty fifth Street branch of the library in Harlem during
14:11
Speaker 3: the Harlem Renaissance, and soon the library was the center
14:14
Speaker 3: of that cultural renaissance, or was a center of that
14:17
Speaker 3: cultural renaissance. And I still haven't deep dive of the
14:19
Speaker 3: Harlem Renaissance, and I'm not going to do it today,
14:21
Speaker 3: but we've touched on a few times, like on our
14:23
Speaker 3: episodes about Ben Fletcher, the black labor organizer from Philly. Also,
14:28
Speaker 3: my great grandmother was like a white artist who knew
14:30
Speaker 3: a lot of the people in that scene, especially where
14:32
Speaker 3: it overlapped with like leftism more broadly, and so I
14:35
Speaker 3: really want to learn more about it at some point,
14:38
Speaker 3: but I didn't this time. Suffice it to say, Harlem
14:42
Speaker 3: was the coolest shit place in the nineteen twenties where
14:44
Speaker 3: black people did a ton of amazing cultural stuff, and
14:48
Speaker 3: the library was part of it. It was intentionally part
14:52
Speaker 3: of it, because librarians didn't start off as magically known
14:56
Speaker 3: as a place where people could meet and do things
15:00
Speaker 3: like they were seen as white places for white stuff,
15:03
Speaker 3: until all these people at the one hundred and thirty
15:06
Speaker 3: fifth Street branch changed that. They held talks by Langston
15:10
Speaker 3: Hughes and a bunch of other folks, and one librarian
15:13
Speaker 3: later wrote about this time quote, if you are familiar
15:17
Speaker 3: with Harlem, you are aware of the fact that the
15:19
Speaker 3: streets are frequently made impassable by the many soapbox speakers
15:23
Speaker 3: and their enthusiastic audiences. It occurred to us that if
15:27
Speaker 3: people will listen to politics and patent medicines, then they
15:30
Speaker 3: will listen to education too, provided it as well presented
15:33
Speaker 3: to them. So we employed one of the most eloquent
15:36
Speaker 3: and most popular of these speakers and paid him to
15:38
Speaker 3: address large crowds at strategic corners on the streets of Harlem.
15:43
Speaker 3: Once a week. These people were urged to come to
15:45
Speaker 3: a meeting at the library. Some two thousand people were
15:49
Speaker 3: reached each week. If out of these fifty appeared at
15:52
Speaker 3: the library, we were confident that something worthwhile had been accomplished,
15:58
Speaker 3: and so they just yeah, got people to come to
16:01
Speaker 3: the library. The other thing that I think is really
16:03
Speaker 3: important to take away from that is from the very beginning,
16:06
Speaker 3: soap boxing, which everyone understands is the podcasting of ye
16:09
Speaker 3: oldie times, frequently mixed uh politics and patent medicines, which
16:16
Speaker 3: brings us to the next segment of this show, the advertisers,
16:28
Speaker 3: and we're back, and so yeah, this library developed the
16:32
Speaker 3: division of Negro Literature History in Prince in nineteen twenty five.
16:36
Speaker 3: Ernestine Rose also helped the first black woman get through
16:39
Speaker 3: library school, a woman named Nella Larson, who worked for
16:42
Speaker 3: a while at the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch,
16:44
Speaker 3: but is much more famous for her place in literature
16:46
Speaker 3: as a writer of American modernism. And it's like the
16:49
Speaker 3: most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. And there are
16:53
Speaker 3: biographies about her. And so I'm like, nope, too much
16:55
Speaker 3: of a side character. Can't because one day probably topic
16:59
Speaker 3: of her own.
17:00
Speaker 2: We love bonus episodes on our show, so you should
17:03
Speaker 2: do bonus episodes with this. I'm just saying I do
17:07
Speaker 2: two a week.
17:08
Speaker 3: I mean I guess you do do five? Yeah, all right,
17:11
Speaker 3: all right, fair.
17:12
Speaker 2: Enough, You're doing great, keep going.
17:17
Speaker 3: I am so impressed that you also still have time
17:18
Speaker 3: to come on other people's shows. I am genuinely.
17:21
Speaker 2: I'm honored for you and for Sophie anytime, all the time.
17:25
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Yes, I love this show. I learned so much.
17:30
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other thing that happened in nineteen twenty five
17:33
Speaker 3: is that Poora Bell Prey enrolled in library school and
17:37
Speaker 3: soon she's going to become the first Puerto Rican library
17:40
Speaker 3: in New York City and probably the country. I really
17:43
Speaker 3: liked the source I read that was like, yeah, we know,
17:46
Speaker 3: she's the first Puerto Rican library in New York City,
17:48
Speaker 3: and it's like in parentheses it's like which realistically probably
17:52
Speaker 3: means the country, but they know they can't say it
17:54
Speaker 3: because it's not. Because I really appreciate that verified because
17:58
Speaker 3: like I everyone knows that listen sins to this. I'm
18:00
Speaker 3: an enemy of any time anyone says the first person
18:02
Speaker 3: who did something something because right, like you can't prove
18:06
Speaker 3: it just anyway whatever my brain works in a very
18:09
Speaker 3: specific way.
18:10
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm with you. Like when we talk about
18:12
Speaker 2: first on anything, it's understanding that it has to do
18:15
Speaker 2: with who's writing the history, where the history historical contexts
18:19
Speaker 2: come from, and who's also claiming what. So it's always
18:22
Speaker 2: asterisk because it also you might they just may not
18:24
Speaker 2: be discovered. And that's okay, because that's some amazing things
18:28
Speaker 2: when you get to discover new information.
18:30
Speaker 3: Totally, and being the first isn't the only thing that matters,
18:33
Speaker 3: you know exactly.
18:35
Speaker 2: I'm sure she was just excited to be able to
18:37
Speaker 2: share her knowledge and her love and her passion.
18:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she does it. She does this so much. Yeah,
18:44
Speaker 3: she gets involved in writing folklore. She once said, quote,
18:49
Speaker 3: one of my duties in the children's room was to
18:51
Speaker 3: read the fairy tale shelves. Thus the folklore of the
18:55
Speaker 3: world opened for me. As I shelved the books, I
18:58
Speaker 3: searched for some of the folk tales I had heard home,
19:01
Speaker 3: there wasn't even one. A sudden feeling of loss rose
19:05
Speaker 3: within me. And so she's at library school and she's
19:08
Speaker 3: this teacher, another libraryan folklorist, a white woman named Mary
19:12
Speaker 3: gold Davis. So during that class she writes a children's
19:16
Speaker 3: book called Peezzi Martina. This goes on to be published
19:20
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty two as the first Spanish language children's
19:24
Speaker 3: book published by a mainstream press in the United States.
19:27
Speaker 3: And it is a romance between a cockroach and a mouse.
19:32
Speaker 3: And she is very clear this is not her story.
19:35
Speaker 3: She heard this from her grandmother and it is a
19:38
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican story. Like a lot of I've only been
19:41
Speaker 3: able to track down some of her stuff, and it'll
19:42
Speaker 3: specifically say like a Puerto Rican story rather than like
19:45
Speaker 3: it'll have her name as the author. But instead of saying, like,
19:48
Speaker 3: buy what about prey, it'll say, like a Puerto Rican story.
19:51
Speaker 3: It's it's it's pretty interesting.
19:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's so interesting when you see people with the
19:58
Speaker 2: love for their heritage, because we've seen it more and more,
20:01
Speaker 2: thank goodness, with like the indigenous people bringing their own
20:05
Speaker 2: folklore or like any kind of storytelling to life, and
20:09
Speaker 2: they share it with people and they make sure to
20:11
Speaker 2: write it because they we know with the colonization, we
20:14
Speaker 2: know and all this stuff white people trying to erase history.
20:17
Speaker 2: Part of raising that history is those lores and trying
20:21
Speaker 2: to make them disappear or trying to make them evil.
20:25
Speaker 2: We know all about that. So having people who take
20:28
Speaker 2: the opportunity and time to write it down so that
20:31
Speaker 2: they can share it and be preserved is such a
20:34
Speaker 2: phenomenal thing to see and being able to see their
20:37
Speaker 2: love for their heritage even like it just feels like
20:41
Speaker 2: I'm being honored, Like I'm being privileged to see and
20:44
Speaker 2: hear about their culture, and I love that aspect. Folklore
20:47
Speaker 2: is so beautiful to me just because of that. When
20:49
Speaker 2: I started learning more about like Korean folklores, I was like, what,
20:52
Speaker 2: And you just feel this sense of connectedness to something
20:55
Speaker 2: that you may not have like in so long or ever.
20:59
Speaker 2: So that's something to two with, like, we should definitely
21:01
Speaker 2: be honoring people like her, Yeah, who are preserving such
21:05
Speaker 2: tales and traditions. I love that.
21:09
Speaker 3: No, that makes a lot of sense to me. And
21:10
Speaker 3: it's interesting because I one of the things that I
21:12
Speaker 3: end up I read a lot of like nineteenth century
21:15
Speaker 3: folk tales, or rather nineteenth century writing down of folk tales,
21:18
Speaker 3: and so a lot of the older ones, the first
21:21
Speaker 3: ones in English are often written by these sort of
21:23
Speaker 3: white interlopers or like white observers who are trying to
21:27
Speaker 3: be good.
21:28
Speaker 5: You know.
21:28
Speaker 3: It's like kind of all over the board. They're either like,
21:30
Speaker 3: check out this wacky thing that they believe in Japan,
21:33
Speaker 3: and other times they're like, I'm white and I've lived
21:35
Speaker 3: in Japan for forty years and I've tried really hard
21:37
Speaker 3: to do this right, you know. Yeah, and it's like
21:40
Speaker 3: really interesting, but people actually writing from that culture, which
21:45
Speaker 3: is what we see more now is you're more guaranteed
21:49
Speaker 3: to get the like actual love of that culture instead
21:52
Speaker 3: of like yeah, and it's funny too because you'll still
21:54
Speaker 3: even see, like check out this weird thing the Ukrainians
21:57
Speaker 3: believe over there in weird Land, you know, because the
22:00
Speaker 3: Ukrainians weren't white in the Victorian mind, like, I mean whatever,
22:04
Speaker 3: they weren't.
22:04
Speaker 2: Right. It's complicated, but it's complication.
22:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it's interesting they bring up this thing about
22:11
Speaker 3: writing these stories down because it's when we talk about next.
22:14
Speaker 3: Libraries had a problem. They were colonized as fuck right,
22:17
Speaker 3: as like an institution, So the only real stories by
22:21
Speaker 3: the library's mind are the ones that are written down.
22:24
Speaker 3: So storytelling for Storytelling Hour had to come from a book.
22:29
Speaker 3: Western libraries didn't understand the idea of oral literacy yet, right,
22:33
Speaker 3: the idea that you can be aware of your culture
22:36
Speaker 3: through oral traditions. Poor A Bell Pray broke that she
22:41
Speaker 3: was the first person probably to appeal and win the
22:45
Speaker 3: right to tell stories that had never been written down.
22:48
Speaker 3: During storytime, Mary gold Davis, her teacher, told her, tell
22:54
Speaker 3: your stories, but only tell the children that none of
22:56
Speaker 3: these stories have been written down, but maybe someday they will.
23:01
Speaker 3: It's like this like almost paternalistic, but it's still this
23:03
Speaker 3: like love where like, yeah, this is an amazing but
23:05
Speaker 3: one day they'll be real stories. But it's still like
23:08
Speaker 3: it's still in the pretty genuine like poor actually has
23:10
Speaker 3: very She thought very highly of the white women librarians
23:13
Speaker 3: who sought her out and nurtured her career and helped
23:15
Speaker 3: her break into this white dominated field. Right, So she
23:19
Speaker 3: told the stories that eventually would find their way into
23:21
Speaker 3: another one of her books, The Tiger and the Rabbit,
23:24
Speaker 3: which was the first English language collection of Puerto Rican
23:26
Speaker 3: folklore in the US. And she starts writing, and her
23:31
Speaker 3: branch is doing amazing stuff in the black community. And
23:34
Speaker 3: then in nineteen twenty nine, she transfers to one hundred
23:37
Speaker 3: and fifteenth Street branch in a Puerto Rican community, and
23:40
Speaker 3: it's here that she really hits her stride and starts
23:43
Speaker 3: kicking ass as a librarian. As far as I can tell,
23:48
Speaker 3: she pioneered Spanish language content in public libraries. I expect
23:53
Speaker 3: she did it as part of a team of people
23:54
Speaker 3: who are also amazing, right, But she worked her ass
23:57
Speaker 3: off to get the community involved in the library. At
24:01
Speaker 3: some point she watched a puppet show at her branch
24:03
Speaker 3: and was like, oh, this is the shit puppets rule.
24:07
Speaker 3: I'm sure that's how she said it. And so for
24:10
Speaker 3: the rest of her life she worked with kids to
24:12
Speaker 3: put on puppet shows because that was part of it,
24:14
Speaker 3: was that by doing puppets you could bring the kids
24:15
Speaker 3: into it, right. And she went around to churches, to
24:19
Speaker 3: community centers, to neighborhood organizations and schools to put on
24:23
Speaker 3: shows and like just do outreach into community. She did
24:27
Speaker 3: bilingual shows regularly too, not just Spanish language shows, and
24:31
Speaker 3: this just like hadn't been done. She put on events
24:35
Speaker 3: for three Kings Day, a Puerto Rican holiday, and she
24:38
Speaker 3: said this quote indirectly presented the library to this group
24:43
Speaker 3: in a way that no other activity could have done.
24:45
Speaker 3: Their confidence was gained. The library put on complete programs
24:50
Speaker 3: in Spanish for children and for adults, and basically they
24:54
Speaker 3: did at the one hundred and fifteenth branch what the one
24:56
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty fifth branch did for the black community.
25:00
Speaker 3: There's a downside to this, although I've read conflicting tales
25:02
Speaker 3: of it, there's a problem if I actually look into
25:04
Speaker 3: too many sources as they all start arguing with each other,
25:07
Speaker 3: you know, right, Okay, so this isn't the librarian's fault,
25:11
Speaker 3: but instead of racist city government's fault. Basically, these two
25:15
Speaker 3: libraries served as quote ghettos where all black and Spanish
25:19
Speaker 3: language content could be put, where all black and Latine
25:23
Speaker 3: workers could be hired. So it was like, you try
25:25
Speaker 3: and get hired as a black worker, and they'll be like, oh,
25:27
Speaker 3: we'll go up to one hundred and thirty fifth and
25:28
Speaker 3: they're like, that's not where I live, you know, and
25:31
Speaker 3: they'd be like, oh, we already have a black library,
25:33
Speaker 3: like we don't need another one. And so that's a problem.
25:38
Speaker 3: And this limits their career advancement, right because you can
25:41
Speaker 3: only work in this one place.
25:43
Speaker 2: Right, instead of opening spots or making opening doors, They're like,
25:48
Speaker 2: compete with each other. Here you go, good luck. And
25:51
Speaker 2: this is because you need to fight this space. The
25:53
Speaker 2: small amount of space is all we have for you.
25:55
Speaker 2: But anyway, keep going.
25:56
Speaker 3: Yes, So in nineteen thirty nine, the Puerto Rican community
26:01
Speaker 3: had moved a bit in the city, so she moved
26:04
Speaker 3: once again to East one hundred and tenth Street and
26:07
Speaker 3: kept up all the same stuff. Bilingual story hour reading
26:10
Speaker 3: club's puppet theater, you name it. But you know what
26:12
Speaker 3: they didn't have at these libraries ads because they were
26:16
Speaker 3: tax funded instead of funded by private companies. But we,
26:19
Speaker 3: on the other hand, are funded by private companies. And
26:22
Speaker 3: that is just the compromises that everyone makes all the time,
26:26
Speaker 3: like the following compromises. Here they are and we're back
26:39
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty. She goes to the ala, the American
26:43
Speaker 3: Library Association convention in Cincinnati, and while she's there, she
26:47
Speaker 3: meets a musician and composer named Clarence Cameron White, who
26:51
Speaker 3: is we're going to get to the first like potential
26:54
Speaker 3: drama that I'm entirely inferring. The way that the story
26:58
Speaker 3: is presented is that she meets him in the and
27:00
Speaker 3: they get married a couple of years later, and everything's
27:02
Speaker 3: happy and great. And I started writing it by reading
27:06
Speaker 3: about him and being like, oh, he was recently widowed
27:08
Speaker 3: or widowered or whatever, he recently lost his wife. The
27:13
Speaker 3: complication she meets him in nineteen forty his wife doesn't
27:16
Speaker 3: die until nineteen forty two, and they don't get married
27:18
Speaker 3: till nineteen forty three.
27:20
Speaker 2: What happened, Oh, drama?
27:22
Speaker 3: Probably they were just friends and then yeah.
27:24
Speaker 2: Were they Can they be friends? Yeah?
27:28
Speaker 3: I mean canon they Yeah, man and a woman doesn't
27:31
Speaker 3: seem possible. But like a figure like this, every version
27:36
Speaker 3: of her history is going to be a little bit sanitized.
27:38
Speaker 3: I mean I found no scandal. Like, I'm not like
27:41
Speaker 3: particularly worried that there's some like crazy skeleton in her closet.
27:44
Speaker 3: But it's like when you're talking about like a children's
27:47
Speaker 3: puppeteer person like, no one's like trying to write about
27:50
Speaker 3: anything salacious, you know.
27:52
Speaker 2: Being the other woman, you know, her personality and the
27:55
Speaker 2: everything about her reminds me of someone like my old
27:58
Speaker 2: drama teacher, who are so passionate and so performed, Like
28:03
Speaker 2: they perform and they love and they tell stories and
28:07
Speaker 2: they understand the importance of puppetry, like and bringing in,
28:10
Speaker 2: like acting out these different characters. I could only imagine
28:15
Speaker 2: what kind of performances she gave in her storytelling, and
28:18
Speaker 2: with that, what type of passion she has and just
28:21
Speaker 2: like in her imagination being able to relay these stories
28:24
Speaker 2: in a way that she was so successful enough to
28:27
Speaker 2: be known to do this as well as writing these stories.
28:30
Speaker 2: I just imagine she's just one of those people. No,
28:33
Speaker 2: totally that you can't help but notice anyway. Yeah, and
28:36
Speaker 2: then the effort she puts in telling these stories is
28:39
Speaker 2: not telling a story, it is living that story for
28:43
Speaker 2: the children or with the children. And I could only
28:46
Speaker 2: imagine that's kind of how she also lived life.
28:49
Speaker 3: I believe it.
28:50
Speaker 2: So who knows, maybe some drama does happen, because when
28:52
Speaker 2: you have that much passion, you know, Yeah, that makes
28:55
Speaker 2: her interesting.
28:56
Speaker 3: No, I believe it. And it's it's interesting, right because
28:59
Speaker 3: you're talking about someone who never had children and gets
29:01
Speaker 3: married at forty, right, and.
29:03
Speaker 2: So you're my type of a woman.
29:05
Speaker 3: You're talking about someone who like either lived the like
29:08
Speaker 3: cat lady life or lived a like pretty wildlife, you know,
29:12
Speaker 3: and there's like.
29:13
Speaker 2: We exist to not have either of those things. Margaret,
29:15
Speaker 2: how dare you true? You're with us? What are you
29:17
Speaker 2: talking about?
29:18
Speaker 3: It's true, right, as an unmarried person in her forties,
29:21
Speaker 3: no children, Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And also and the
29:24
Speaker 3: reason that I mentioned, my great grandmother, who's like basically
29:27
Speaker 3: living in New York around the same time as an artist,
29:30
Speaker 3: also didn't get married until forty and then had like
29:33
Speaker 3: one child I knew was and that's like wasn't normal
29:37
Speaker 3: at all for someone living, you know, a woman living
29:40
Speaker 3: in the early part of the twentieth century, right, So
29:45
Speaker 3: she falls in love with Clarence White. You know, he's
29:48
Speaker 3: got his own Wikipedia page as a composer and was
29:52
Speaker 3: one of the most prominent violinists in the country. And
29:55
Speaker 3: after they get married, Pura takes a leave of absence
29:58
Speaker 3: from the library to follow him around tour for a bit,
30:01
Speaker 3: and then she goes back to the library and then
30:04
Speaker 3: she's like, you know what, I actually want to focus
30:06
Speaker 3: on my writing, and so she just kind of wants
30:07
Speaker 3: to be doing the art stuff and hell yeah, And
30:11
Speaker 3: so she does that for a while. She writes. As
30:13
Speaker 3: far as I can tell, she keeps up the storytelling
30:15
Speaker 3: and the puppets during this time, but I'm not one
30:17
Speaker 3: hundred percent certain, but it's like implied, and she writes
30:21
Speaker 3: like eight books. Seventeen years into married life, her husband
30:25
Speaker 3: dies of larynx cancer in nineteen sixty. She goes back
30:30
Speaker 3: to the library to a new post one that I
30:32
Speaker 3: think they might have made just for her, the Spanish
30:35
Speaker 3: children specialist. And so at this point that whole thing
30:39
Speaker 3: about like the Spanish language stuff only being at one
30:41
Speaker 3: or two branches is not the case that was actually
30:45
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that there seemed to be drama about.
30:47
Speaker 3: Is like I read some people arguing that that sort
30:49
Speaker 3: of gettoization was not as prominent as other people were claiming,
30:52
Speaker 3: and that it was other issues keeping people from advancing,
30:54
Speaker 3: and I read a lot of drama about employment discrimination
30:58
Speaker 3: in the nineteen Thirtiesically, anyway, at this point, Spanish language
31:04
Speaker 3: stuff all over wherever it's needed, and so she just
31:08
Speaker 3: goes to every branch where it's needed and helps plan
31:10
Speaker 3: events and helps bilingualize the New York City Public Library system,
31:15
Speaker 3: which is, if that's all she had done, it would
31:17
Speaker 3: have been amazing.
31:18
Speaker 4: Huge.
31:18
Speaker 3: If all she had done was write those children's stories,
31:21
Speaker 3: it would have been amazing. If all she'd done was
31:22
Speaker 3: be a puppeteer, would have been amazing. Then when she
31:27
Speaker 3: was sixty five, she was forced to retire because all
31:30
Speaker 3: city employees at the time were forced to retire at
31:33
Speaker 3: sixty five. I don't know if that's still the case
31:34
Speaker 3: or not. I actually wonder because at the top, I
31:38
Speaker 3: was saying that there's like all these documents suggest she
31:40
Speaker 3: was not born in nineteen oh three, but she told
31:41
Speaker 3: people she was born in nineteen oh three. You know,
31:44
Speaker 3: I wonder if it was so that she could keep
31:45
Speaker 3: working a couple extra years smart, but I'm not sure,
31:51
Speaker 3: you know, that's entirely my conjecture. She died in nineteen
31:56
Speaker 3: eighty two, but her legacy continues to this day. Starting
31:59
Speaker 3: in a Night eighteen ninety six, the American Library Organization gives
32:02
Speaker 3: out an award in Belpre's name every year for children's
32:05
Speaker 3: books by Latino authors. A librarian originally from the Dominican
32:10
Speaker 3: Republic named Viannella Rivas told NPR in twenty sixteen, quote,
32:15
Speaker 3: because of her, we have a story time in Spanish,
32:18
Speaker 3: we have computer classes in Spanish, and I feel like
32:21
Speaker 3: as a Latina librarian, we have a responsibility to continue
32:24
Speaker 3: doing the work that she started. Shockingly, her books are
32:29
Speaker 3: out of print right now, despite her being the earliest
32:32
Speaker 3: known Afro Caribin American writer, despite there being an award
32:36
Speaker 3: in her name. And yeah, there are still three more
32:40
Speaker 3: librarians on that list of cool librarians that I was handed.
32:43
Speaker 3: So expect to be returning to this subject. But I
32:48
Speaker 3: wanted to read some of her stories on book club,
32:51
Speaker 3: but I haven't found a PDF of it yet. The
32:54
Speaker 3: Internet Archive had one, but they're hacked. Right now, I
32:58
Speaker 3: found one really short story and so fuck it, I'm
33:01
Speaker 3: going to read it to you all.
33:02
Speaker 2: Now, do you have a puppet.
33:05
Speaker 3: I'll pretend to have a putty.
33:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, what the full experience?
33:08
Speaker 3: You all should act as though I have a really
33:10
Speaker 3: amazing puppet.
33:11
Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
33:12
Speaker 3: It's actually interesting that you talked about when you were
33:14
Speaker 3: talking about folklore earlier, and we were talking about how
33:17
Speaker 3: like indigenous folklore is perceived by others. Right, this story
33:22
Speaker 3: is going to use the word Indian to describe the
33:23
Speaker 3: people that's talking about, right, and it's gonna be describing
33:26
Speaker 3: indigenous people. But the American North American conception of race
33:32
Speaker 3: isn't necessarily going to apply one to one to in
33:35
Speaker 3: a Puerto Rican context, and like so it's like interesting
33:39
Speaker 3: because I can't say as cleanly how it relates to
33:43
Speaker 3: indigenous culture. Right. Basically, that's my way of saying. If
33:48
Speaker 3: the story had been written by a white person, I
33:49
Speaker 3: would be suspect of it, but it was not, gotcha.
33:54
Speaker 3: The legend of the Hummingbird from Puerto Rico by poor
33:57
Speaker 3: a Bell prey between the towns of Kayi and Cidra
34:02
Speaker 3: far up in the hills, there was once a small
34:04
Speaker 3: pool fed by a waterfall that tumbled down the side
34:06
Speaker 3: of the mountain. The pool was surrounded by pomorosa trees,
34:10
Speaker 3: and the Indians used to call it Pamerosa Pool. It
34:13
Speaker 3: was the favorite place of Alida, the daughter of an
34:15
Speaker 3: Indian chief, a man of power and wealth among the
34:17
Speaker 3: people of the hills. One day, when Alida had come
34:21
Speaker 3: to the pool to rest after a long walk, a
34:23
Speaker 3: young Indian came there to pick some fruit from the trees.
34:26
Speaker 3: Alida was surprised for he was not of her tribe.
34:29
Speaker 3: Yet he said he was no stranger to the pool.
34:32
Speaker 3: This was where he had first seen Alida, and he
34:34
Speaker 3: had often returned since then to pick the fruit. Hoping
34:38
Speaker 3: to see her again, he told her about himself to
34:41
Speaker 3: make her feel at home. He confessed with honesty and
34:44
Speaker 3: frankness that he was a member of the dreaded Carab
34:47
Speaker 3: tribe that had so often attacked the island of Barenkan.
34:51
Speaker 3: As a young boy, he had been left behind after
34:53
Speaker 3: one of those raids, and he had stayed on the
34:55
Speaker 3: island ever since. Alida listened closely to his story and
35:00
Speaker 3: the two became friends. They met again in the days
35:03
Speaker 3: that followed and their friendship grew stronger. Alida admired the
35:06
Speaker 3: young man's courage in living among his enemies. She learned
35:10
Speaker 3: to call him by his Carab name, Taru, and he
35:13
Speaker 3: called her Alida, just as her own people did. Before long,
35:16
Speaker 3: their friendship had turned into love. Their meetings by the
35:20
Speaker 3: pool were always brief. Alida was afraid their secret might
35:23
Speaker 3: be discovered, and careful though she was. There came a
35:27
Speaker 3: day when someone saw them and told her father. Alida
35:30
Speaker 3: was forbidden to visit the Pomerosa Pool, and to put
35:33
Speaker 3: an end to her romance with the stranger, her father
35:35
Speaker 3: decided to marry her to a man of his own,
35:37
Speaker 3: choosing preparations for the wedding started at once. Alida was
35:43
Speaker 3: torn with grief, and one evening she cried out to
35:46
Speaker 3: her god, Oh yuki U, help me kill me, or
35:51
Speaker 3: do what you will with me, but do not let
35:53
Speaker 3: me marry this man whom I do not love, and
35:56
Speaker 3: the great God Yukiyu took pity on her and changed
35:58
Speaker 3: her into a delicate red flower. Meanwhile, Taru, knowing nothing
36:03
Speaker 3: of Alida's sorrow, still waited for her by the Pomerosa Pool.
36:07
Speaker 3: Day after day. He waited. Sometimes he stayed there until
36:10
Speaker 3: a mantle of stars was spread across the sky. One night,
36:15
Speaker 3: the moon took pity on him. Taro. She called from
36:18
Speaker 3: her place high above the stars, Oh, Taru, wait no
36:21
Speaker 3: longer for Alida. Your secret was made known, and Alita
36:24
Speaker 3: was to be married to a man of her father's choosing.
36:27
Speaker 3: In her grief, she called to her god, Yukiyu. He
36:29
Speaker 3: heard her plea for help and changed her into a
36:32
Speaker 3: red flower. Ahi ahe cried, Taru, Oh Moon, what is
36:36
Speaker 3: the name of the red flower? Only Yukau knows that.
36:39
Speaker 3: The moon replied. Then Taro called out, O yuka U,
36:43
Speaker 3: God of my Alida, help me too, help me to
36:46
Speaker 3: find her. And just as the great God had heard
36:49
Speaker 3: Alida's plea, he listened now to Taru and decided to
36:53
Speaker 3: help him. There by the Pomerosa Pool, before the moon
36:57
Speaker 3: and the silent stars, the Great God changed Taru into
37:00
Speaker 3: a small, many colored bird, Fly Calibri, and find your
37:05
Speaker 3: love among the flowers, he said. Off went the Calibri,
37:09
Speaker 3: flying swiftly, and as he flew, his wings made a
37:12
Speaker 3: sweet humming sound. In the morning, the Indians saw a
37:16
Speaker 3: new bird darting around among the flowers, swift as an
37:19
Speaker 3: arrow and brilliant as a jewel. They heard the humming
37:23
Speaker 3: of its wings, and in amazement, they saw it hover
37:25
Speaker 3: in the air over every blossom, kissing the petals of
37:28
Speaker 3: the flowers with its long, slender bill. They liked the
37:32
Speaker 3: new bird with the music in its wings, and they
37:34
Speaker 3: called it humming bird. Ever since then, the little many
37:39
Speaker 3: colored bird has hovered over every flower he finds, but
37:43
Speaker 3: returns most often to the flowers that are red. He
37:46
Speaker 3: is still looking, always looking for the one red flower
37:50
Speaker 3: that will be his lost Alita. He has not found
37:53
Speaker 3: her yet. That's the story.
37:57
Speaker 2: All these do remind me of the indigenous tales. And
38:01
Speaker 2: the god you were talking about is a Tano god,
38:04
Speaker 2: which is of the gods of the Puerto Rican indigenous peoples.
38:08
Speaker 2: I have a failing if we were able to dig
38:10
Speaker 2: more into her ancestral understand she is probably a part
38:13
Speaker 2: of that indigenous group because that's from they're from her
38:18
Speaker 2: area as well, like they are from that area. So
38:20
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe these are tales from her her community. Yeah,
38:25
Speaker 2: which is gorgeous, and I love that she was able
38:29
Speaker 2: to preserve that and share that because that's what we
38:32
Speaker 2: know when it comes to like indigenous and like especially
38:35
Speaker 2: older religious groups. Is the is the stories of creation,
38:39
Speaker 2: of love in creation. It is so beautiful and I
38:42
Speaker 2: love that she preserved that so we could hear these stories, I.
38:47
Speaker 3: Know, and I like, I want to find so many
38:49
Speaker 3: more of them, and I guess I have to wait
38:51
Speaker 3: for the Internet archive to be unhacked or I need to.
38:53
Speaker 3: Like I found like some used versions of the books,
38:56
Speaker 3: but they were like you know how Amazon.
38:59
Speaker 2: Automout eBay level of like yeah.
39:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they're like price jacked up to two hundred
39:03
Speaker 3: and fifty dollars or whatever, you know, right, and yeah, no,
39:07
Speaker 3: I I I find it fascinating, and I find it
39:10
Speaker 3: fascinating that they're out of print, and you know, I
39:13
Speaker 3: I hope someone does something about that, but right, especially
39:17
Speaker 3: because like, yeah, I love reading the earliest versions of
39:20
Speaker 3: folk tales I can find, but usually that means reading
39:25
Speaker 3: white interpretations of folk tales and so reading not that,
39:29
Speaker 3: but the oldest that I can find is like for me,
39:31
Speaker 3: the sweet Spot, you know.
39:33
Speaker 2: Right, and on top of that, someone who heard it
39:36
Speaker 2: from an area that she knew, who was familiar with
39:39
Speaker 2: that that was her home.
39:40
Speaker 5: Yeah.
39:41
Speaker 2: Like one of the best parts to this is learning
39:44
Speaker 2: about indigenous people that I didn't know anything about. I
39:46
Speaker 2: know nothing about yuko U and akabath God in itself
39:50
Speaker 2: and which we love on our show. We love doing
39:52
Speaker 2: like mythical goddesses and creatures and all of those, because
39:55
Speaker 2: you know, there's so much power behind that, Yeah, and
39:57
Speaker 2: the reason people believe in them. But not knowing that
40:01
Speaker 2: obviously Puerto Rico, it makes sense to know there's an
40:04
Speaker 2: indigenous group there, yeah, and community there that needs to
40:07
Speaker 2: be preserved and their history should be preserved and deserved
40:09
Speaker 2: to be preserved. Yeah, probably should be in power whatever whatnot.
40:15
Speaker 2: But all of that to say is now, like you
40:17
Speaker 2: brought this understanding through the talks of a library. I love.
40:21
Speaker 2: I love the connectedness of.
40:23
Speaker 3: It, I know, and I love that it's like the
40:26
Speaker 3: work that she did about keeping this stuff alive. And
40:30
Speaker 3: then like, obviously language is an important part of I
40:32
Speaker 3: mean obviously Spanish is in the indigenous language, but compared
40:35
Speaker 3: to English for an immigrant community, it's like really important
40:37
Speaker 3: to have stuff specifically, Yeah, just like making the library
40:43
Speaker 3: a space that's actually for the communities as part of
40:46
Speaker 3: I just I was really impressed by her story and
40:48
Speaker 3: I like, and it's a lot of stuff that I
40:50
Speaker 3: take for granted, Like even the story about the origin
40:53
Speaker 3: of libraries. I had just been like, right, oh, yeah,
40:55
Speaker 3: of course a country has to a country has to
40:57
Speaker 3: have roads, a country has to have like lending libraries.
41:01
Speaker 3: Otherwise it's not really a country, is it. And it's like, well, actually, uh,
41:05
Speaker 3: you know, we're pretty new to having them.
41:08
Speaker 2: Like it's also a story about understanding how important that
41:11
Speaker 2: history is and librarians are and what they bring to
41:14
Speaker 2: a community as we're in one of the worst states
41:18
Speaker 2: of for librarians and libraries and banned books, and a
41:23
Speaker 2: reminder like like how important these stories are that so
41:27
Speaker 2: many cannot understand because culturally we should be able to
41:31
Speaker 2: learn about these things, and we people should know about
41:35
Speaker 2: these groups of people who have always existed, existed before them,
41:40
Speaker 2: you know, for us. So all of that is beautiful,
41:42
Speaker 2: as well as the fact that you know, I love
41:44
Speaker 2: things like the little libraries. You know that you see
41:48
Speaker 2: the look at birthhouse looking yeah, libraries. But in order
41:52
Speaker 2: to like kind of take back control from those who
41:56
Speaker 2: are trying to ban books and trying to like make
41:58
Speaker 2: libraries the enemies somehow, when stories like these are so
42:03
Speaker 2: important and then people like her brought traditions and tell
42:08
Speaker 2: folklore to life to children who didn't understand or maybe
42:12
Speaker 2: for a long time, especially you know, you know, as
42:15
Speaker 2: a person who immigrated to the US was taught to
42:19
Speaker 2: learn what learned US culture and white culture essentially to
42:23
Speaker 2: truly understand the country if you want to be a citizen,
42:25
Speaker 2: instead of understanding that their culture was just as important
42:30
Speaker 2: to the makeup of this area, specifically New Yorkers who
42:34
Speaker 2: are from Puerto Rico and children who may have been
42:37
Speaker 2: born in New York but their families are from Puerto
42:40
Speaker 2: Rico and then being able to learn about their culture
42:42
Speaker 2: and to appreciate their own culture. Like, wow, she did
42:45
Speaker 2: so much in such an early time. Obviously, I'm very
42:48
Speaker 2: excited you opened up this big box and I'm like,
42:52
Speaker 2: oh my god, I love everything about this, including the libraries.
42:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, totally. And it's just like I want to
42:58
Speaker 3: fly on the wall. That stuff so bad, you know,
43:00
Speaker 3: like and even it ties into what you're saying just now,
43:03
Speaker 3: ties into how one of the problems with the early libraries,
43:06
Speaker 3: including you know, some of the women's ones and the
43:09
Speaker 3: free black ones and stuff, is they fell into this
43:10
Speaker 3: idea that like this is for the improvement of people
43:13
Speaker 3: by reading philosophy and stuff. And I'll read some philosophy
43:18
Speaker 3: here and there. Right, I'm not I get it. I'm
43:20
Speaker 3: I think that that stuff matters. But this idea that
43:24
Speaker 3: fiction is distinct as this like lesser thing is something
43:28
Speaker 3: that we're finally starting to break away from. And I
43:31
Speaker 3: think part of the way that we break away from
43:32
Speaker 3: it is exactly what you're talking about about. How these
43:35
Speaker 3: stories and this idea of culture, like stories are how
43:38
Speaker 3: you preserve culture in a lot of ways, and so
43:42
Speaker 3: like stories matter, fiction matters just as much, you know. Yeah,
43:46
Speaker 3: And I love I just think libraries are cool. I've
43:49
Speaker 3: already spoken it too so far on this tour, and
43:51
Speaker 3: like I can't wait to speak at more of them.
43:53
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah.
43:54
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things. Again, like I will continue
43:56
Speaker 2: to go to the different cities or different places and
43:58
Speaker 2: find libraries. When York and we went to the library immediately,
44:02
Speaker 2: like we've explored everything. But thank you. I was going
44:06
Speaker 2: to say one of the two things. One, I love
44:08
Speaker 2: that story. I love being able to hear her writing
44:11
Speaker 2: because it is it's exactly right, you know, when you
44:14
Speaker 2: thirst for a cultural like folklore, that is exactly what
44:18
Speaker 2: I would like to hear like that was perfectly done,
44:21
Speaker 2: and you telling it was so perfectly like. Yeah, obviously
44:24
Speaker 2: Margaret is a writer. She's definitely a storyteller. It is
44:27
Speaker 2: like being able to.
44:28
Speaker 4: Hear it through you.
44:29
Speaker 2: Both of those were Shew's kiss. So thank you for
44:32
Speaker 2: sharing with me.
44:33
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, well, thanks for coming on to my
44:37
Speaker 3: episode about libraries. There's going to be more of them.
44:40
Speaker 3: And yeah, if people want to hear more stories about
44:44
Speaker 3: stuff that their mom never told them and then accidentally
44:47
Speaker 3: ask really personal questions that you don't intend to ask,
44:51
Speaker 3: where can they do that?
44:53
Speaker 2: Well, we do talk a lot about our trauma as
44:55
Speaker 2: in fact, I started Stuff Mom Never Told You by
44:57
Speaker 2: talking about the METO movement and the trauma. So there
45:01
Speaker 2: you go. But that stuff Mom Never Told You you
45:03
Speaker 2: can listen to us wherever you listen to your podcast.
45:06
Speaker 2: We have twelve.
45:08
Speaker 4: Years worth of episodes, so if you want to go
45:12
Speaker 4: listen to all the different hosts that's been there, historical context,
45:15
Speaker 4: you want to hear our reactions to like different elections,
45:18
Speaker 4: which is really still stings, you can.
45:21
Speaker 2: Do that as well. We also have a book and
45:23
Speaker 2: it's called Stuff Mom Never Told You. Actually at libraries.
45:26
Speaker 2: We were able to find them at the Seattle Library
45:28
Speaker 2: and a New York library. Cool Boston, No who. He
45:31
Speaker 2: hadn't written the book yet, So if you want to
45:33
Speaker 2: go check it out at the library, is there?
45:35
Speaker 6: Yeah?
45:36
Speaker 3: And if it's not, you should request it.
45:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. Please. Also, you can find me on McVeigh sam
45:42
Speaker 2: Instagram for my doggy pictures.
45:44
Speaker 3: That is what Instagram is for as far as I'm
45:47
Speaker 3: concerned exactly, Well, if you want to find me on tour,
45:51
Speaker 3: you can look at my Instagram or my substack and
45:53
Speaker 3: I'll be posting tour dates. And if you don't live
45:56
Speaker 3: in the US, you can tell me that. You can
45:59
Speaker 3: be like, why are you coming to where I live?
46:01
Speaker 3: And then the answer is the aforementioned dog. And on
46:03
Speaker 3: some level I'm aware that I could probably find someone
46:05
Speaker 3: to watch my dog for long enough to go to
46:06
Speaker 3: a different country, but why would I want to. I
46:09
Speaker 3: like my dog more than I like you, dear listener,
46:12
Speaker 3: And that's not even a slight against you. It's just
46:13
Speaker 3: how much I like my dog. But that's unrelated. And
46:18
Speaker 3: also I have a book out called The Sapling Cage,
46:20
Speaker 3: just what I'm a tour about, and you should go
46:22
Speaker 3: read it. Is fiction. I have a bunch of other
46:24
Speaker 3: books too, including the most entertainingly titled is Escape from
46:28
Speaker 3: Insil Island, So you can go read that if you want.
46:32
Speaker 3: And you could also listen to Cooler Zone Media because
46:35
Speaker 3: nothing would be funnier than watching me complain about ads
46:38
Speaker 3: and then there's no ads and wouldn't that be funny?
46:42
Speaker 3: And also you can listen to all the cool Zone
46:44
Speaker 3: media podcasts that way, including an awful lot of shows
46:48
Speaker 3: including Wait, there's one I really liked recently. Oh, there's
46:53
Speaker 3: a really good it could happen here about the future
46:55
Speaker 3: of coffee done by Prop who does hood politics with Prop,
46:58
Speaker 3: and it is like one of the best encapsulations of
47:02
Speaker 3: climate crisis and also how capitalism and extractive practices work,
47:08
Speaker 3: and also how cooperativism. It was just like, I don't
47:11
Speaker 3: even drink coffee. It's also super funny. Yeah, I've been
47:15
Speaker 3: long holding that Prop is my favorite explained current events
47:18
Speaker 3: person in my life.
47:20
Speaker 5: He starts off the episode by just singing a song
47:23
Speaker 5: and total so you get past that part.
47:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that always throws me off. When host starts singing
47:30
Speaker 2: or rapping, I'm like, what the what's happening? I'm never prepared. Yeah,
47:34
Speaker 2: but he's like a professional rapper. Yeah, Like, oh, I'm
47:37
Speaker 2: just good. It's still stocking though to see it live,
47:39
Speaker 2: like if I'm on my Crsta body.
47:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I.
47:43
Speaker 1: Love but stay for the stay for the vibes, Stay
47:45
Speaker 1: for the vibes.
47:48
Speaker 3: And that's it. We're here at the end of the show.
47:52
Speaker 4: Hi.
47:58
Speaker 5: Cool People Who Did Stuff is a production of Cool
48:01
Speaker 5: Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit
48:04
Speaker 5: our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
48:08
Speaker 5: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
48:10
Speaker 1: Or wherever you get your podcasts.
48:16
Speaker 6: Shout out to the team at Cool People Who Did
48:18
Speaker 6: Cool Stuff for putting this together, letting us run it,
48:23
Speaker 6: having Samantha on.
48:24
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, thank you.
48:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a fantastic podcast, really great history of
48:31
Speaker 2: revolutionaries who've done incredible things, and I love everything that
48:35
Speaker 2: Margaret does. We need to have our back on the
48:37
Speaker 2: show because she's actually written several books, so we should
48:39
Speaker 2: definitely have her back off of her newsbook too, because it's,
48:42
Speaker 2: from what I understand, really good.
48:44
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we should. Well.
48:47
Speaker 6: In the meantime, listeners, if you would like to contact us,
48:49
Speaker 6: you can You can email us a Stuffania mom Stuff
48:51
Speaker 6: at ihartmedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
48:53
Speaker 6: at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at
48:55
Speaker 6: stuff We Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We
48:58
Speaker 6: have a tea public store, and we have a book
49:00
Speaker 6: you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as
49:02
Speaker 6: always to our super producer Christina, our excited producer Maya, and.
49:05
Speaker 1: Our contributor Joey. Thank you and listeners.
49:08
Speaker 6: Thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You This
49:11
Speaker 6: podcast from iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
49:13
Speaker 6: you can check out the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever
49:15
Speaker 6: you listen to your favorite shows.