In Memoria

What is memoria?

      Memoria is action. It is the funneling of identities and cultural traits from the past to the present so that the past can resonate in the present. That resonance, for minorities who act on a “need to reclaim a memory, memory of an identity as formed through the generation,” transforms the process of identity formation (12). It lays brickwork for people who straddle two worlds so they may seek stable ground beneath their feet. Villanueva mines his cultural past for stories of “the imperial lords, those who have forcibly changed the identities of people of color through colonization” as a way of mapping the collective changes in identity (12). It allows him to distill his present reality into discernible connections and moments of overlap. He develops a connection with Nelly, the department’s graduate secretary, in that their “first imperial overlord was there before the world got large, more local: the Japanese and the Caribes” (12). In this connection, he imagined that “others look and listen on with looks of wondering. It’s not their memory” (12, emphasis added by me). Engaging memoria built conduits for Villanueva; one connected to Nelly, who is otherwise Filipina and not Puerto Rican, and one connected to others. It forged separation and allowed Villanueva to see a connection he shared with anOther. This groundwork would only have been possible through memoria. Villanueva shows us how memoria is movement, construction, synaptic; it refuses stasis and instead becomes engaged with us dynamically to help minority groups construct identity.

      Memoria is movement, connection. It leads us to trace roots, find and create repositories of information in the form of lived experiences. Memoria also discerns tumultuous changes in identity. In the recent wave of historical transmigration and globalization, dozens upon dozens of minority groups are set adrift in cultures not their own. Memoria maps these waves, and guides us here. We come to shore, in the present day.