Spanish Harlem
Plastrik, Stanley
ISLAND IN THE CITY, by Dan Wakefield. Houghton Mifflin, 278 pp, $4.00 Dan Wakefield has written a fine human document about the 600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City. It is a little...
...the ease of their children and the femininity of their women...
...And if there are any doubts on the need for elementary humane emotions, consider the strike of the employees in the so-called New York City charity hospitals...
...Unfortunately, Dan Wakefield does not discuss this fundamental issue...
...It is possible that Dan Wakefield be lives these people have most to offer, along other lines—the warmth of family relationships and solidarity...
...The author conjures up the nightmare that we call Spanish Harlem...
...It is not easy to "get it" and there are certainly more who would argue that the candle is hardly worth the game than those who feel drawn to penetrate its mysteries...
...The wealthy philanthropic benefactors, donating their administrative and charitable services, took an attitude toward their Puerto Rican employees (now the bulk of the nonprofessional hospital workers) which has a long history...
...a natural good humor and feeling...
...This leads to certain weaknesses in his book which ought not to be concealed...
...If this is so, then he is right and the other issues I have raised fall into a subordinate place in this troubled America with its jittery people...
...That is one possible explanation of why the "Americanization" of the Puerto Rican proceeds, apparently, on the lowest possible level...
...It seems to me that he should have faced the challenging question of educational attitudes among the Puerto Ricans, of motivation (or its absence), if he wanted to make this chapter as meaningful as many of his others...
...Education, we know, has been both a stepping stone and a touchstone (as to attitudes) for all minority groups in the past...
...For the fact is, and much teacher experience substantiates this, the children of this people are under-motivated or little interested in education either for itself or for social advancement, and in this respect are notably different from almost all other immigrant groups...
...the addicts and semi-criminals...
...The hopes, sufferings and dilemmas of its people are seen not through the city's official institutions (Welfare Department, Housing Commission, police), but rather through institutions of the Puerto Ricans themselves: local clubs, churches, political groups, teen-age gangs, etc...
...Dan Wakefield has given of himself—probably too much of himself— in his effort...
...Let me illustrate with an example...
...That Dan Wakefield's approach to this latest minority problem (he'll probably object to that term, and rightly so) is different from the growing collection of dreary documentary "studies" is made clear at the start...
...Because, after all, there are a number of important problems about these people which do present difficulties...
...Houghton Mifflin, 278 pp, $4.00 Dan Wakefield has written a fine human document about the 600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City...
...Considering the widespread prejudice and open hostility which these people have suffered from since they began to arrive in 1945, Wakefield can easily be forgiven a tendency to overplay his hand...
...Wakefield, recognizing this, devotes a chapter to the matter, but it is the most conventional one in his book...
...but never mind...
...Occas sionally, but then simply to underscore a point, he quotes from one of the of ficial documents...
...Now, this world of Spanish Harlem is something quite distant from the best of us...
...It is a little on the sentimental side (perhaps in reaction to those who have seen these people as so many faceless ciphers...
...In fact, it dates back to the day 500 years ago when Columbus enslaved the first Indian to carry water to his ships and commanded his chief to lead him to gold...
...the naive expression of independent political action...
...I do not claim to know the reason for this...
...Wakefield attempts to penetrate still deeper into the mind and feeling of these people by forcing us to see their culture at work: spiritualism and the shadowy semi-voodoo world...
...Perhaps the major one is this: The interaction between Puerto Rican culture with that of post-war America is different from all previous relationships between immigrant groups and the host culture of the U.S...
...the Puerto Rican in the strange world of labor organization...
...the reader's common sense will redress the balance...
...yet it ought to be faced candidly...
...Is it because this is the first instance of a pre-industrial minority group having to enter our "mass society...
...then he leads us into it via the migrant night flight from San Juan...
Vol. 6 • July 1959 • No. 3
