Erasure

Growing up, it was just my mother, my brother, and me. My mother had been adopted, and her birth certificate had labelled her, and subsequently us, as Italian. After moving from California where we had spent some time in a women's shelter run by Catholic nuns, we found ourselves living alongside my father's very white family in rural central Maine.

Even with the label of Italian, it was always apparent I was different. In the Maine summers, I turned golden brown while my fairer-skinned peers burned. As I grew up, my blonde hair turned deep brunette (except for one gold streak that remains to this day), and my blue eyes gave way to large, almond shaped dark brown. Adults would look at me and drawl about how "exotic" I was, long before I truly understood the sociological impact of that word.

My blue eyed, blonde father didn't know my true lineage, but he knew I was an outsider. One night, I was seven years old and it was my father’s weekend for our bi-monthly visitation. I sat on a stranger's couch long past midnight while my father and his friend drank, talking about things my child brain did not and could not find interesting. Exhausted and sullen, I just wanted to go home and be in bed, safe. When my father prodded me to engage and I refused, he sneered, calling me a "stuck up guinea". His friend laughed and called me a "wop". I didn't know what those words meant then, but I distinctly remember the crumpled-up paper feeling of being othered by my own blood for sport. Shame without understanding why.

Erasure

Growing up, it was just my mother, my brother, and me. My mother had been adopted, and her birth certificate had labelled her, and subsequently us, as Italian. After moving from California where we had spent some time in a women's shelter run by Catholic nuns, we found ourselves living alongside my father's very white family in rural central Maine.

Even with the label of Italian, it was always apparent I was different. In the Maine summers, I turned golden brown while my fairer-skinned peers burned. As I grew up, my blonde hair turned deep brunette (except for one gold streak that remains to this day), and my blue eyes gave way to large, almond shaped dark brown. Adults would look at me and drawl about how "exotic" I was, long before I truly understood the sociological impact of that word.

My blue eyed, blonde father didn't know my true lineage, but he knew I was an outsider. One night, I was seven years old and it was my father’s weekend for our bi-monthly visitation. I sat on a stranger's couch long past midnight while my father and his friend drank, talking about things my child brain did not and could not find interesting. Exhausted and sullen, I just wanted to go home and be in bed, safe. When my father prodded me to engage and I refused, he sneered, calling me a "stuck up guinea". His friend laughed and called me a "wop". I didn't know what those words meant then, but I distinctly remember the crumpled-up paper feeling of being othered by my own blood for sport. Shame without understanding why.

Diaspora

When I was 18, my mother finally found her birth family, and we learned the truth. We had been mislabelled to avoid the prejudice against Puerto Ricans present in the 1960's US. But simply knowing I was Puerto Rican didn't make things easier, if anything I felt more confused. I didn’t know anything about Puerto Rico. My initial move to the Midwest introduced me to my first experiences with abject racism. Boyfriends joked about me carrying a switchblade, peers debated the validity of my relationships based on my skin color, often implying my ethnicity made me untrustworthy or hot-headed. I wouldn't get why until my late 20's when I saw West Side Story on an awkward second date at a drive in theater and realized that many of their perceptions had been shaped by it. I knew enough to cast a withering glance at a friend who once ventured to wrap their mouth around the vowel for “spic,” keeping his gaze as it fell limp onto the ground between us. Men would fetishize me, making a game of guessing my ethnicity like it was a confectionary recipe, one once proclaiming “I’ve always wanted to try a Puerto Rican.” (God willing you never will, sir.)

How strange to always have the sense that everyone else knew something about me that I didn’t. Each comment added another lock on the door of my understanding, pushing me further from my heritage, further isolating me. For so long, I treated my Puerto Rican identity as a tourist would, afraid of taking what wasn't mine, afraid of not belonging.

Diaspora

When I was 18, my mother finally found her birth family, and we learned the truth. We had been mislabelled to avoid the prejudice against Puerto Ricans present in the 1960's US. But simply knowing I was Puerto Rican didn't make things easier, if anything I felt more confused. I didn’t know anything about Puerto Rico. My initial move to the Midwest introduced me to my first experiences with abject racism. Boyfriends joked about me carrying a switchblade, peers debated the validity of my relationships based on my skin color, often implying my ethnicity made me untrustworthy or hot-headed. I wouldn't get why until my late 20's when I saw West Side Story on an awkward second date at a drive in theater and realized that many of their perceptions had been shaped by it. I knew enough to cast a withering glance at a friend who once ventured to wrap their mouth around the vowel for “spic,” keeping his gaze as it fell limp onto the ground between us. Men would fetishize me, making a game of guessing my ethnicity like it was a confectionary recipe, one once proclaiming “I’ve always wanted to try a Puerto Rican.” (God willing you never will, sir.)

How strange to always have the sense that everyone else knew something about me that I didn’t. Each comment added another lock on the door of my understanding, pushing me further from my heritage, further isolating me. For so long, I treated my Puerto Rican identity as a tourist would, afraid of taking what wasn't mine, afraid of not belonging.

Ink

I spent my whole life carving out my own safety and belonging in the world. In my early 20s, I moved to Saint Louis, far from everyone I knew, and got married. The weekend after our wedding, Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, fifteen minutes from where I lived. I went to the protests one night, determined to see it for myself. What I saw opened my eyes. I was overwhelmed with the grief and pain, but also the vitality and spirit of the protestors intent on mourning a death, shouting out injustice, but also celebrating the life that remains.

I put myself through community college, where I took a print making class. While there I applied for the entry level position of production artist and was given an internship at a local screen printing shop. I hated that shop, but something there clicked into place.

I got divorced. I tumbled through toxic situations; boozy coworkers, predatory polycules, toothless spaces touting progressive ideologies, trying to find my footing, wanting to stay in Saint Louis and make it work. I was alone in the midwest, but I was determined to put down roots in the brick-lined streets of the River City.

Screen printing would become the answer to all of my earthly artistic prayers. The mesh gave me a laser focus, and I found my work becoming more interesting, more complex, more real. I found my voice and my refuge in the ink. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. I dedicated a decade to mastering the medium, eventually becoming the head graphic designer at a local print shop, where I became acquainted with the weirdos and punks of the commercial production world. That’s how I met John. I annoyed the people around me by preaching the democratic foundations of the medium, and its importance as a means of production, crowning myself a Print Shop Princess, because if you can’t tell, yes, I am absolutely obnoxious. Even before I knew what I was about to learn. I started selling my art at local events, Pride events and Flea Markets, and the reception I received was incredible.

Ultimately, I founded Bird-Mad Girl Press as a vehicle for financial independence for the people in my life, to amplify marginalized voices, channel our collective rage into a force for change, and use bold expression to build a community rooted in empathy and authenticity.

Through screen printing, I found a career. I found a rhythm and a craft and started to settle into my life. I felt almost whole.

Ink

I spent my whole life carving out my own safety and belonging in the world. In my early 20s, I moved to Saint Louis, far from everyone I knew, and got married. The weekend after our wedding, Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, fifteen minutes from where I lived. I went to the protests one night, determined to see it for myself. What I saw opened my eyes. I was overwhelmed with the grief and pain, but also the vitality and spirit of the protestors intent on mourning a death, shouting out injustice, but also celebrating the life that remains.

I put myself through community college, where I took a print making class. While there I applied for the entry level position of production artist and was given an internship at a local screen printing shop. I hated that shop, but something there clicked into place.

I got divorced. I tumbled through toxic situations; boozy coworkers, predatory polycules, toothless spaces touting progressive ideologies, trying to find my footing, wanting to stay in Saint Louis and make it work. I was alone in the midwest, but I was determined to put down roots in the brick-lined streets of the River City.

Screen printing would become the answer to all of my earthly artistic prayers. The mesh gave me a laser focus, and I found my work becoming more interesting, more complex, more real. I found my voice and my refuge in the ink. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. I dedicated a decade to mastering the medium, eventually becoming the head graphic designer at a local print shop, where I became acquainted with the weirdos and punks of the commercial production world. That’s how I met John. I annoyed the people around me by preaching the democratic foundations of the medium, and its importance as a means of production, crowning myself a Print Shop Princess, because if you can’t tell, yes, I am absolutely obnoxious. Even before I knew what I was about to learn. I started selling my art at local events, Pride events and Flea Markets, and the reception I received was incredible.

Ultimately, I founded Bird-Mad Girl Press as a vehicle for financial independence for the people in my life, to amplify marginalized voices, channel our collective rage into a force for change, and use bold expression to build a community rooted in empathy and authenticity.

Through screen printing, I found a career. I found a rhythm and a craft and started to settle into my life. I felt almost whole.

Crucible

As time went on the rhetoric around hispanic people started to become less covert again. Talks about a giant wall being built to keep out Mexicans and how these countries weren’t sending their “best people”. It didn’t matter that the actual numbers proved that overwhelmingly these immigrants brought prosperity and hard work to their communities, and were some of the most truly patriotic people in the nation. That they paid taxes into systems they didn’t benefit from. That they did the labor their white neighbors didn’t feel like doing. The language got more hostile. Someone needed to be blamed, and diasporic communities are often the first in line. The more this tension grew, the more resolute I became in holding on to my latina heritage even if I didn’t truly understand it yet.

2020 brought a strange new world for all of us. Covid-19 seemed to bring everything to a standstill. Anger, distrust, and tribalism flared. During the fateful summer of the George Floyd protests, I took street medic training and printed face masks to bring with me to share with other protesters. I found it hard to look away from the pain and violence happening in the streets.

By the recent Presidential election, my ethnic identity felt like a raw nerve. Jokes about Puerto Rico being a “trash island” and more, spoken on national stages. My island, that I didn’t know. My people, who didn’t know me. Me. I confided in a friend about the feeling of seeing a man elected to the highest office in the nation, knowing what had been said about hispanics and more, knowing the very real pain and suffering he was about to unleash. I talked about how it felt knowing that a large percentage of the population didn’t consider my pain, our pain, to be of consequence when choosing a leader.

My friend defended her white relatives, saying that they just didn’t understand. I told her it didn’t matter to me. So instead she said “At least we pass for white.”

No. Whiteness comes in shades, and at a certain level has nothing to do with skin color. In rooms full of people like her, I do not “pass” as white, and I have known that my whole life.

And what’s more, I didn’t want to.

Crucible

As time went on the rhetoric around hispanic people started to become less covert again. Talks about a giant wall being built to keep out Mexicans and how these countries weren’t sending their “best people”. It didn’t matter that the actual numbers proved that overwhelmingly these immigrants brought prosperity and hard work to their communities, and were some of the most truly patriotic people in the nation. That they paid taxes into systems they didn’t benefit from. That they did the labor their white neighbors didn’t feel like doing. The language got more hostile. Someone needed to be blamed, and diasporic communities are often the first in line. The more this tension grew, the more resolute I became in holding on to my latina heritage even if I didn’t truly understand it yet.

2020 brought a strange new world for all of us. Covid-19 seemed to bring everything to a standstill. Anger, distrust, and tribalism flared. During the fateful summer of the George Floyd protests, I took street medic training and printed face masks to bring with me to share with other protesters. I found it hard to look away from the pain and violence happening in the streets.

By the recent Presidential election, my ethnic identity felt like a raw nerve. Jokes about Puerto Rico being a “trash island” and more, spoken on national stages. My island, that I didn’t know. My people, who didn’t know me. Me. I confided in a friend about the feeling of seeing a man elected to the highest office in the nation, knowing what had been said about hispanics and more, knowing the very real pain and suffering he was about to unleash. I talked about how it felt knowing that a large percentage of the population didn’t consider my pain, our pain, to be of consequence when choosing a leader.

My friend defended her white relatives, saying that they just didn’t understand. I told her it didn’t matter to me. So instead she said “At least we pass for white.”

No. Whiteness comes in shades, and at a certain level has nothing to do with skin color. In rooms full of people like her, I do not “pass” as white, and I have known that my whole life.

And what’s more, I didn’t want to.

Vaivén

In my late-mid 30’s, my mother was contacted by her long-lost half-sister, who revealed a secret I never anticipated: my grandfather had been a graphic designer at a screen printing shop owned by his family in Puerto Rico.

Could it be true that I had somehow mirrored the professional path of my ancestor, unknowingly, thousands of miles away in space and time?

I became obsessed with finding some sort of clue as to the truth of this claim; the name of the shop, a piece they printed, anything. I stayed up late at night in my office, scouring ancestry sites, researching ship manifests and census reports. I mapped my family’s vaivén, the movement back and forth from the island. I watched a complex drama unfold, a story of passenger ships and island hopping, the fluidity of race as demonstrated by the arbitrary labeling of my family as black on one trip, mulatto on another, and finally white when they were able to self identify; by far the safest of options, and a common act of assimilation by afro-hispanic diasporic communities hoping for safety in a new land.

I saw my ancestors' own West Side Story play out. This was not the Hollywood stereotype that had been projected onto me, but the lived reality of borincanos moving to the West Side of NYC in the 30s and 40s in search of a better life for their family. I found myself pulling up the addresses and tracing the street names and paths on my screen, wondering which sidewalks they would have walked on, what interactions did they have on those streets. I thought about the coldness of New England, the same area I had grown up in, and wondered how they felt there, natives of a tropical land. What were their heartaches? Their triumphs?

Vaivén

In my late-mid 30’s, my mother was contacted by her long-lost half-sister, who revealed a secret I never anticipated: my grandfather had been a graphic designer at a screen printing shop owned by his family in Puerto Rico.

Could it be true that I had somehow mirrored the professional path of my ancestor, unknowingly, thousands of miles away in space and time?

I became obsessed with finding some sort of clue as to the truth of this claim; the name of the shop, a piece they printed, anything. I stayed up late at night in my office, scouring ancestry sites, researching ship manifests and census reports. I mapped my family’s vaivén, the movement back and forth from the island. I watched a complex drama unfold, a story of passenger ships and island hopping, the fluidity of race as demonstrated by the arbitrary labeling of my family as black on one trip, mulatto on another, and finally white when they were able to self identify; by far the safest of options, and a common act of assimilation by afro-hispanic diasporic communities hoping for safety in a new land.

I saw my ancestors' own West Side Story play out. This was not the Hollywood stereotype that had been projected onto me, but the lived reality of borincanos moving to the West Side of NYC in the 30s and 40s in search of a better life for their family. I found myself pulling up the addresses and tracing the street names and paths on my screen, wondering which sidewalks they would have walked on, what interactions did they have on those streets. I thought about the coldness of New England, the same area I had grown up in, and wondered how they felt there, natives of a tropical land. What were their heartaches? Their triumphs?

Registration

That's when I found it. Written in scrawling cursive on an ancient piece of paper, scanned and uploaded on the internet 70 years later: the 1950’s NYC Census. Right next to his name, his 1-year-old son, and his new wife, was his occupation: "silk screen printing" and "designer for dress prints".

At my work desk in the dark after hours of the shop, the light from two monitors as my only illumination, I sat in silence. I heard a soft tick-ticking as I traced the words on the screen in front of me. Suddenly a floodgate I wasn’t aware of opened, and I lowered my head into my hands to cry. In wonder of having inherited the same hands, my craft and passion, from my lineage. Crushed with grief over what had been denied to me. I had to stop and let the feelings fully move through and wash over me, and in their wake when I raised my head again I knew I was forever changed.

I would soon discover that my grandfather’s time working as a designer at a family shop aligned with the 1950s–1980s, a period known as the Golden Age in Puerto Rican silkscreen production (serigrafía). During this era, screen printing was the cornerstone of the island's visual identity, used to produce accessible art that addressed social issues, uplifted the common people, and celebrated hand craft and pride. Government programs, like DivEdCo, supported the mission by hiring the top artists and craftsmen of the age, producing hundreds of silk screens to educate and uplift the masses. They became known for their complex layering, sometimes 20+ pulls, their hand written type, their movement and energy.

When I took the business plan I had written for Bird-Mad Girl Press and compared it to the established ethos of that era of Puerto Rican printmaking, of social change and democratic empowerment, it lined up almost 1:1. This knowledge made what had once seemed an outrageous statistical anomaly a mathematical inevitability.

Registration

That's when I found it. Written in scrawling cursive on an ancient piece of paper, scanned and uploaded on the internet 70 years later: the 1950’s NYC Census. Right next to his name, his 1-year-old son, and his new wife, was his occupation: "silk screen printing" and "designer for dress prints".

At my work desk in the dark after hours of the shop, the light from two monitors as my only illumination, I sat in silence. I heard a soft tick-ticking as I traced the words on the screen in front of me. Suddenly a floodgate I wasn’t aware of opened, and I lowered my head into my hands to cry. In wonder of having inherited the same hands, my craft and passion, from my lineage. Crushed with grief over what had been denied to me. I had to stop and let the feelings fully move through and wash over me, and in their wake when I raised my head again I knew I was forever changed.

I would soon discover that my grandfather’s time working as a designer at a family shop aligned with the 1950s–1980s, a period known as the Golden Age in Puerto Rican silkscreen production (serigrafía). During this era, screen printing was the cornerstone of the island's visual identity, used to produce accessible art that addressed social issues, uplifted the common people, and celebrated hand craft and pride. Government programs, like DivEdCo, supported the mission by hiring the top artists and craftsmen of the age, producing hundreds of silk screens to educate and uplift the masses. They became known for their complex layering, sometimes 20+ pulls, their hand written type, their movement and energy.

When I took the business plan I had written for Bird-Mad Girl Press and compared it to the established ethos of that era of Puerto Rican printmaking, of social change and democratic empowerment, it lined up almost 1:1. This knowledge made what had once seemed an outrageous statistical anomaly a mathematical inevitability.

Home

I still didn’t dare claim what was being presented to me. Even with all of that convergence. I wanted permission. I needed permission. I felt like an orphan with my heart in my hands, asking to be recognized.

The reverence was a hot jewel stuck in my throat. It felt like if I opened my mouth 37 years of abandonment and isolation would fall out with it.

In this vulnerable state, I came across the poem “Boricua en la Luna" by Juan Antonio Corretjer. It was popularized by Boricua singer/songwriter Roy Brown who adapted it to song in 1987, 2 years before I would be born. The song tells the story of a fictional character who recalls his heritage, a product of the Puerto Rican migration to New York. Despite their aspirations, the song tells of the struggles of Puerto Rican immigrants in the States. In its conclusion, the protagonist declares himself that he would be "borincano" even if he was born on the Moon.

I am Boricua en la Luna. The Puerto Rican on the Moon. I was lost in the cold vacuum of space created by the erasure of my lineage, the trauma of adoption. Suffering the consequences of being a woman of color without having the community, history, or pride to anchor me through it. Unmoored, drifting, searching. Shining as brightly as I can, hoping to be seen, hoping to come home. And I can feel it. A tether. In the quiet moments, now, I can feel my connection to them.

For my entire life, I moved through the world feeling like an alien. I was a stranger in my skin, an outsider in my own family, a tourist in my own heritage, constantly at odds with my surroundings, having to carve out my own safety and belonging. I thought my obsession with screen printing, community, and resistance was just my own pathology, wrought from a chaotic upbringing raising myself on punk music and the internet of the digital age.

Discovering the legacy of the Golden Age of serigrafía and my family's place within it changed everything, for me. It reframed my entire existence and opened up pathways of understanding in my mind. Modern science is only now using the term epigenetics to catch up to what native and indigenous populations have known in their blood for centuries: that our ancestors leave their blueprints, their traumas, and their triumphs directly inside of us. I hadn't been wandering aimlessly; I had been walking the exact path my ancestors laid out for me in ink. I had picked up the same tools my ancestors used for social change and resistance, and without knowing it inherited the same fire of my people. All those years of not knowing, not fitting in, and feeling completely disconnected were suddenly eclipsed by a profound, undeniable truth:

I'm not an anomaly at all. Through this craft, I fit exactly where I belong.

The erasure of a people almost worked this time. But they didn't count on me.
Bird-Mad Girl Press is no longer just a basement side hustle; it is the living continuation of my people's legacy. Moving forward, everything we build at BMGP will be anchored in the craftsmanship and artistry of the Tallers of Puerto Rico's Golden Age of serigrafía. We will celebrate and platform the voices of the marginalized. We will seek to engage and uplift our community by empowering people with skills and tools for self-sufficiency. We will continue to elevate the medium of screen printing, as my people did, and honor its place in the history of human expression.

Tendrías que sacarme la sangre, literalmente, de las venas.

Our story continues.