American History

“I once read in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not column that Paterson, New Jersey, is the place where the Straight and Narrow (streets) intersect.”

Straight and Narrow was an actual intersection in Paterson (Straight Street is now bisected by the Christopher Columbus Highway). “Straight and narrow” is also an expression that indicates a life of honor and moral rectitude. Ripley’s likely mentions the intersection due to the irony of it sharing a name with a common idiom, but the moment also draws attention to the importance of language in the story (and especially to what can be lost in translation).

“At almost any hour of the day, El Building was like a monstrous jukebox, blasting out salsas from open windows as the residents, mostly new immigrants just up from the island, tried to drown out whatever they were currently enduring with loud music.”

El Building is the tenement in which Elena lives. Its box-like structure suggests a jukebox, as does the music emanating from it, but that is where the word’s cheerful connotations end: El Building’s residents are enduring hardship and use the music to distract themselves from their woes. Though Puerto Ricans are (and were then) American citizens, the US has often treated them as foreigners due to their ethnic and linguistic differences. By broadcasting salsa music, the residents seem to be both defending their heritage and demonstrating their desire to belong.

“But the day President Kennedy was shot, there was a profound silence in El Building; even the abusive tongues of viragoes, the cursing of the unemployed, and the screeching of small children had somehow been muted.”

Cofer uses sensory details to describe how El Building responds to Kennedy’s death. She enumerates what sounds one normally hears in the building, their absence underscoring everyone’s profound shock and respectful observance of the