Luana Rodriguez

What a breathtaking movie! Reminiscent of my earlier life in the Great Apple. I am an elder Boricua who was raised in the Bronx and who experienced New York City back in the day. I was a child of the big screen musical movie era – my very first movie was ‘The Sound of Music.’ Oh, how I loved these movies because they whisked me away from a time of knowing the hard life of being a young Puerto Rican girl in such a large city. Yes, West Side Story is a classic and representative of an earlier Nuyorquino experience, but ‘In the Heights’ is a musical classic of this era. It brought back memories of good times, good food, good music and dance and good relationships. Although, these movies are generational, they speak the same message of the struggles of minority immigrants, one of which is cultural acknowledgement. It was so eloquently expressed by Abuelita Claudia who quotes, “We had to assert our dignity in small ways. That's why these napkins are beautiful. That's why my mother's gloves were beautiful. Little details that tell the world, we are not invisible.” Not a whole lot has changed on how Latinos are viewed by society but now Director Jon M. Chu has done a beautiful job bringing it to the forefront, contributing to all those recent efforts by select others to acknowledge the value and “color” that our Latino ways bring to this nation, and for all to experience. Some will ask, “Who was the main character,” or state, “Their performances were inflated.” If you know anything about the Latino culture whether it be Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, etc., we work and live as a community. There are no main characters, which are typically just the thoughts and shortcomings of being non-Hispanic. Regarding the overinflated performances, I can tell you that I grew up with Latinas who exuded these same personalities and they were the ones with the biggest hearts (And funny too). Thank you to the producers and directors for helping me remember them. I have since relocated to the Southwest to serve others as a healthcare professional and to what I thought, improve my own life. Was I wrong. I was met with the same stereotypes and discrimination despite providing healthcare to their community and receiving a Doctoral degree in the process, the first in my family to do so. Unfortunately, I was also younger and naïve because I left my Latin community behind in New York, fooling myself into thinking there was something better out there. I feel that Usnavi had the right idea, to bring the Dominican Republic back to him and his new family in Washington Heights. Home is really where your loved ones are, blood-related or not, and not necessarily what climate you’re in. As an Abuelita myself now, I can speak from an experiential realization that all I needed was always in my New York backyard. My advice to impart to the younger Boricua’s – love yourselves for the culture you are born into, never be ashamed of who you are and represent, and always help and support those relatives that share similar challenges. Regrettably for me now, the time is too late.