Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance Of A Puerto Rican Childhood

The chapter opens with a brief description of a home movie of a party filmed in Paterson, New Jersey, when Cofer was a child. From this, Cofer recalls arriving in Paterson in 1955, her mother, her brother, and her three-year-old self joining her father who had been stationed there for a year. They lived in an apartment building known as El Building which housed numerous other Puerto Rican families. Cofer’s father tried to find other accommodations but was turned down because, while he could pass for European in the eyes of racist landlords, the rest of the family could not.

In the home move Cofer’s mother sits on a sofa with two other women, both relatives. One is clearly a “novia,” only just arrived in the states, which is clear in her self-conscious, awkward pose. The other woman, Cofer’s cousin, is far more confident, having shed these tell-tale signs of a newly arrived immigrant. Cofer’s mother is “somewhere halfway between the poles they represent in our culture” (90).

Cofer’s mother liked living in El Building, taking comfort in the familiar smells of Puerto Rican food and the sound of salsas and people talking in Spanish. However, her father was desperate to leave and assimilate more fully into American life.