Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina is a memoir by Raquel Cepeda. It tells the story of Raquel’s childhood in part one, describing her constant moving around from San Francisco to New York, even living in Santo Domingo for a little while. She talks about what it was like to see her mother’s abusive relationship, and eventually living under her father’s roof. She deals with racism in school, and abuse at home. This part of the memoir feels more like a “coming-of-age” type of story. Part two talks about her journey of self-discovery. She almost loses her father to heart disease, and finally decides that she wants to do ancestral DNA testing. Cepeda struggled so much with her identity in the past that she desired to find out what her background was like, once and for all.

In the selected quote, we are in the beginning of the memoir. Cepeda describes her parents’ relationship, which “was an oil-and-water whirlwind romance between a handsome singer and a 16-year-old child bride whose move to Upper Manhattan quickly soured on pecuniary exigencies and pregnancy”, according to a book review by Kirkus Reviews. And it’s exactly that.

“Everybody knew Dominican men were a bunch of rubirosas, players. Regardless of class, color, and creed, they turned savage over fresh meat. And after feasting on the finest cuts, and, shit, even their compai’s leftovers, gristle and all, the bones were spat out before these horny men headed back out to the human viveros on El Malecon and here on the pewter streets of Nueva York. Eduardo convinced the girl that he was the exception.” (8)

This quote shows the way that men tend to view romantic/sexual relationships (more specifically the women in them), in this form of literature, keeping in mind that Cepeda’s book was an autobiography. She seems to believe that Dominican men only seem to want to abuse and use women for sex. This view appears in the rest of the story with a multitude of evidence, when her mother has a “rebound”, as she refers to it. Cepeda tells the reader about how this man, whom she was forced to call “Papito”, used to sexually abuse and even beat her mother. Before he is introduced into the story, she tells the audience that “Papito is just another person on the growing list of people that don’t fucking matter” (28). She has a clear hatred towards men that abuse women, especially her mother.

This is a very common theme in an abundance of the novels we read in class, and it’s a reality that a lot of Latina women face. According to an article by National Latin@ Network, “1 in 3 Latinas have experienced domestic violence in their lifetime”.

Claim: Although this is a recount of Raquel Cepeda’s personal life, I believe she is attempting to show her audience the harsh reality of the commonality of domestic violence for Latinx women.

I chose this image solely because I feel it represents a solid chunk of Cepeda’s childhood. She dealt with her mother’s abusive and violent relationship with “Papito”, and her father’s verbal and physical abuse at home.

An Effort to Stop Domestic Violence Against Latina Women

A Long Walk Home is a Chicago-based organization founded by two sisters that is focused on using “art to educate, inspire, and mobilize young people to end violence against girls and women”, according to their mission statement. Cepeda herself has mentioned one of the sisters and their group in an article about the encouragement of sexual violence towards young Latina women.