Description:
Rosario Morales' The Dinner is carved into the backbone of strong granite, tall and strong. It fits, in a way. The Dinner describes a night when the author's relatives are setting the table for a dinner party for the wealthy family they serve. They are not invited, but this does not bother them: they take the time to dress in bright colors, cook their own feast, and sit down and relax together. They use only what they have made, and cook with what ingredients they can find, paying tribute to their forefathers who "kept it going."
About the Author:
Rosario Morales was born in 1930 in New York. Raised in New York City, she married at the age of 20. She moved to Indiera, Puerto Rico, in the 1950s with her husband, Aaron Levins, where they farmed and taught at a local university. She has three children and in 1967 the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Morales continued to write. She is well known for her socialist and anti-war messages in her poetry and prose: she described herself as "some sort of radical" in a letter written to the MBTA Project Committee. In her letter, Rosario describes herself as a writer who grew up in an incredibly diverse environment and who is proud to be a woman, a minority and a radical in today's society. In 1986, she co-wrote a book with her daughter, Aurora, entitled Getting Home Alive, which highlighted the differences and similarities between the Puerto Rican and American woman.
Response:
This MBTA exhibit celebrates the unity of the people who lived in the neighborhoods threatened by the I-95 project.Mrs. Baez Serves Coffee on the 3rd Floor suggests that this was a community of working-class immigrants united mostly by pain, but they were also people who managed to turn what little they had into something beautiful. This text is a celebration of that resourcefulness and unity: among women, among servants, among Latinos, among those who are left out and whose voices are not heard. It is a celebration of the way one's heritage can still manifest itself beautifully, even when they lack a voice. It is a celebration of strength.
By Jess McCann.
