My parents are Dominican. I would always go to the Dominican Republic, and I fell in love with Bachata, which comes from the Dominican Republic.
We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields.
I'm a big fan of Caribbean food, Spanish food, Dominican food - like rice and beans. Hot sauce just adds a different layer of boom to the food, you feel me?
Im a big fan of Caribbean food, Spanish food, Dominican food - like rice and beans. Hot sauce just adds a different layer of boom to the food, you feel me?
I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.
When we started on 'Power,' I was committed to respecting the differences among Spanish dialects: Dominican, Nuyorican, Mexican, etc. I wanted the language our characters spoke to be as specific as possible, to reflect New York as it is.
I am Dominican American. My father was born and raised in the U.S. and his heritage is German and Eastern European, and my mother hails from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.
My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.
My biggest struggle was probably having to move from the Dominican to the United States to go to high school. Moving to Michigan, the weather, the language, I didn't speak English at all. That adjustment for me was difficult at the beginning.
I am very much the daughter of immigrants. It's both a point of pride and an essential part of characterizing my upbringing. We spoke Spanish in our house. We listened to Spanish music. All of the TV channels we watched were in Spanish. We ate mostly Italian and Argentinian food.
In the Dominican, there are a lot of kids who need help. I just do that for my mom because my mom liked to help a lot of kids in the Dominican. Whoever I am right now is because of her. She gave me the education; she always took care of me like a mommy.
I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do.
I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.
If I'm performing in the United States, I'm able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I'm in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I'm completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.
My dad is Dominican, my mother's Puerto Rican, and I got into bachata at the age of 10 or 11. When I started listening, it had a reputation for being music for hick people. I thought that had to be changed. I was born and raised in the Bronx, and I knew you make something cool if you're cool.