Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance Of A Puerto Rican Childhood

“Once again, I must turn to my literary mentor for this project, Virginia Woolf, for an answer: I wanted to try to connect myself to the threads of lives that have touched mine and at some point converged into the tapestry that is my memory of childhood.” 

Cofer begins the book by exploring the unreliability of memory. However, instead of seeing this as a challenge, she embraces it; she does not try to accurately recall her childhood but uses her memory as a jumping-off point. She explicitly aims to explore the emotional resonance and sense of connection that surrounds her childhood, employing her imagination as much as her memory.

“The aroma of coffee perking in the kitchen, the mesmerizing creaks and groans of the rockers, and the women telling their lives in cuentos are forever woven into the fabric of my imagination, braided like my hair that day I felt my grandmother’s hands teaching me about strength, her voice convincing me of the power of story-telling.” 

Mamá’s storytelling has a profound influence on Cofer’s writing. Her sensual memories of listening to tales and fables is inseparably woven into her understanding of the power of stories. In many respects these early experiences set her on the path to writing Silent Dancing.

“As each of their eight children were born, new rooms were added. After a few years, the paint did not exactly match, nor the materials, so that there was a chronology to it, like the rings of a tree, and Mamá could tell you the history of each room in her casa, and thus the genealogy of the family along with it.” 

The house where Cofer spent her time in Puerto Rico was known to everyone as Mamá’s house. It is symbolically significant, representing the center of the family’s world and the stage for their stories and memories. It also represents the family itself, having grown almost organically in conjunction with the number of children. Finally, it represents Mamá’s crucial role within the family because these new rooms all orbited Mamá’s room, which was the heart of the house just as she was the heart of the family.