In this special collab episode, Margaret finishes telling Samantha McVey some of the history of public libraries and how the first Puerto Rican librarian in the US changed everything.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha. Welcome to stuff I
never told you production by her too, and.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to a very special crossover. Is that what we're
gonna call the Sandy Yeah? Okay crossover. So, as you
already know if you've been listening, I was a guest
on Margaret Kiljoy's podcast called Cold People Who Did Cool Stuff,
And this last time that I was on there, I
(00:39):
got to hear the history of the Public Library and
it was such a fascinating episode. I love these types
of episode, and I've talked about it a few times,
to the point that I think we've even talked about
the native people's in Puerto Rico, the Tano, which is
what we talked about a little bit on the episode.
So I asked, UH if we could actually on our
(01:01):
feed because I loved loved this episode so much, specifically
part two, and it is titled Poora Belprey, the Puerto
Rican Librarian who brought a bilingual storytelling to New York.
So I really wanted y'all to be able to hear this,
and you should. I also go back and listen to
their first part of this episode because this is part two,
(01:21):
but please, please, please, enjoy this crossover episode with myself
and Margaret Kiljoy talking about this amazing person, Pura Belprey
Cools Media.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that despite all the bad things that
are happening, there's people who try to do things about
the bad things that are happening. And I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy and with me this week to talk about libraries.
It's Samantha McVay. Hi, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I'm great. Thanks for having me on again. I love
being a part of the show.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yay, Yeah, Okay, I have a question. You're the host
of stuff mom never told you? Correct, I don't know
that your relationship with your own mother. Does your mom
ever get mad about the implication that she never told
you these things?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So that's a loaded question. I don't have time. This
is a real loaded question.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Okay to this.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
When I told my mother I was quitting my social
work job to become a podcaster, which, as you would expect,
first thing was radio. What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
That was that? And then it went into you know
feminist show. Oh no, you've become one of those people
who was ruining the world and that proceeded to a
cry session and I was ignoring each other for a while.
Better yet, speaking of libraries, I actually myself, my co host,
recently wrote a book based on our show, Intersectional Feminism,
(02:50):
and I have completely hidden that from my mother in
fear of her being angry with me.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh shit, I'm sorry that I brought it up. Thank
you for your honesty about it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Anyway, loaded questions, But I will say, because my mother
is absolutely against those things, there's a lot that my
mother did not tell me.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, so you have a lot of material for the show.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Mine would be the like, there's them. I think it's
reductrous or something has a meme or headline or whatever
of a you know, parent just accidentally forgot to mention
that health issue they've been struggling with for forty years
that runs in the family. Yeah, you know, I'm just like, whoops,
never brought that one up.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I can't add that to the trauma that I've endured
because I'm adopted.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So oh yeah, no, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
There's so many loaded things that we're talking about. I
apologize for the trauma dumping.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, nope. Now I'm just gonna let me see if
I can come up with another thing to accidentally bring
up that.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I uh as you can see I'm handling it well.
You do great? Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sophie is our producer. Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I was like when you asked that question, I was like, oh,
I knows.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
She knows a little bit of trauma. We kind of
bonded over it. I was like, listen noted questions. You
can't come in with those types of questions as an intro.
I love making an awkward presence.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna come up with
some even worse ones later. That's my plan. Our audio
engineer is Rory Hi.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Rory Hiroy Hello, sorry about the trauma dubbing on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Ar theme music was written for us by Unwoman and
the main subject this week is New York and probably
the US's first Puerto Rican librarian. She was an Afro
Puerto Rican author and puppeteer and tri lingual hero named
Puta Beppre and she is a fascinating subject. I couldn't
(04:51):
find a biography on her, like a book length biography
on her, but there's a lot of academic papers librarians.
There's a lot of academic paper about her and a
lot of like pop articles about her, so I put
together the best that I can. Her name was the
first one on the list that was given to me
by a librarian at the conference this year, And yeah,
(05:13):
I was gonna do them all, but it looks like
I'm doing porhm and the rest will do it some
other time. Poora Belprey was born on February second. Normally
you'd say what year someone was born after you say
the date. Who fucking knows what year she was born.
Sources will claim eighteen ninety nine, nineteen oh one, nineteen
(05:34):
oh two, and nineteen oh three. She claimed nineteen oh three,
so I'm going to go with that one. I will
let her self identify birth year. It's almost like weird, Well,
they're supporting documents claiming other years, so it's not just
a like we don't trust her or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
She was generally reasonably cagey about her time in Puerto
Rico as a kid, and which, you know whatever, Like
no one needs to talk about their childhood unless the
host of podcast brings it up rudely at the top
of an episode, So like, she's not a public figure
she's a librarian. You know, a lot of what is
known about her are educated guesses. But she was one
(06:12):
of five kids who grew up in a loving and
religious family, most likely Catholic, but she didn't seem to
write or talk much about religion as best as I
can tell. She also seems to have written or talked
very little about being black. We've talked about this before
on the show, like on the episodes we did about
the Young Lords, which is this Puerto Rican I guess
called sort of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers, and that's fair,
(06:34):
but also they're peers, so it's like, well, then the
Black Panthers are the Black Young Lords whatever, you know? Right, Anyway,
we talked about how Puerto Rican racial identity, at least
historically looks really different than race looks in the continental US.
So it's like, makes a lot of sense that she
identifies strongly as Puerto Rican and that is mostly what
(06:56):
she talked about. She later married a black man in
regularly lived in black neighborhoods, but it seems that her
identity was primarily Puerto Rican. What she did write and
talk about was her connection to the legacy of Puerto
Rican folklore. She wrote quote, I grew up in a
home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed
(07:17):
down by word of mouth for generations. As a child,
I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I had heard.
The characters became quite real to me. I remember during
school recess that some of us would gather under the
shade of the tamar d tree. There we would take
turns telling stories. The best guess that people make it
(07:38):
almost feels like ghoulish, the way that people write biographies,
where you're like trying to dredge up this stuff that
people clearly just didn't really want to talk about, and
there's no reason that anyone should really care about the real,
specific nitty gritty of the class upbringing of this you
know person, But yeah, you know, here we are. The
best guess is that she was in a family those
sort of culturally middle class, but without money, right, without
(08:01):
much money. Her father was a building contractor who moved
the family around a lot for work, and she grew
up speaking Spanish, English and French, and both of her
parents were literate. Her older sister at Lease, taught in
Puerto Rico for ten years before moving to New York City.
This is one of the earlier waves of Puerto Rican
movement into the US. And again, if you want to
(08:21):
hear way more about that, listen to our episodes about
the young lords. Porta graduated high school in nineteen nineteen,
then started college at the University of Puerto Rico. But
when Alise got married in nineteen twenty, the whole family
traveled to New York City for the wedding and Poro
was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm staying in New York
(08:42):
And so she stayed in New York and at first
she got work as a seamstress, which was one of
the main jobs available to Puerto Rican immigrants at the time.
But then in nineteen twenty one, she was hired by
the Public Library of New York, which means I can
introduce another hero of the episode, Ernestine Rose never met
(09:03):
anyone named Ernestine. One day, I'm going to mean a
trans woman named Ernestine, because trans women love to name
ourselves like weird old timing names, said Margaret. And I
definitely know some like Agatha's and you know, whatever, good name.
I haven't met a Gertrude yet, but it'll happen, oh hope.
So Ernestine Rose was named after Ernestine Rose, which made
(09:27):
her hard to look up because it was a much
more famous Ernestine Rose. The first Ernestine Rose was an
abolitionist and suffragist who I don't know a ton about,
but Wikipedia called her the first Jewish feminist, or rather
Wikipedia's as that other people called her that, and who
am I to argue with. I didn't read much about her.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
We're going to mark that, okay, I.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Know, because it was like, you can only follow each
rabbit hole like a couple steps, right, Ernestine Rose, the
younger one is like the already the side character. And
then I was like, now I'm gonna read about this.
I'm like, wait a second, I doing I have to
record at some point?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You just chase after so many Yeah, how do you
handle the like I have so many mini series episodes
because it ends up being like I have a thought
and then that thought turns into see, we did a
whole religious trauma and I thought it might be two parter.
It's thirteen parts all an hour long.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Amazing. I really want to listen to that one.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So it goes bad. I don't do well. I don't
do well.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
How long ago? How far back?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Last year, this year, last year, beginning of this year,
because we were talking about just overall the new anti
feminist movement and then talking about anti abortion movements and
how it's very much rooted into religious trauma and white supremacy.
So it became a whole thing, and then we went
down so many rabbit holes. But it's specific honestly to
American Baptists and like that, we don't even talk much
(10:54):
about Catholicism. Like that's how deep we went in without
going there.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, it was a thing.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, okay, So the answer is that you would also
now be doing a whole side episode about Ernestine Rose
one and Ernestine Rose two. I appreciate that you're.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Doing better at controlling this and actually being really really
like following through thanks, as opposed to myself, who I'm like,
I can definitely do this in thirteen parts, let's go.
So you're doing great.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, i'much discipline. So our Ernestine that we're
going to talk about the librarian Ernestine. We're going to
call her Ernestine Junior, even though she isn't related to
Ernestine Senior, just because it was funny to me. Both
of them seemed cool as hell. Ernestine Junior is this
white lady who may or may not have been Jewish.
She apparently claimed she was Jewish, and then one historian
(11:45):
I read disputes this. Who graduated from library school in
nineteen oh five, making her one of the first bona
fide librarians in the United States of America, and she
hit the ground running to try and make libraries cooler.
By nineteen oh eight, she was working hard to make
sure that whatever library she was in was actually integrated
(12:06):
into the ethnic community that it was part of. So
that's like the big thing we're going to talk about,
is integrating libraries into the communities that they're part of,
instead of being sort of, you know, a place that
shows up and is like everyone should think like these
white people think. And at the beginning, this meant serving
the Yiddish and Russian speaking Jewish community that she worked in,
(12:29):
which is probably the community we've talked about a thousand
times on this show because that's where all the weird
the anarchists and communists from Russia were hanging out because
they were all Yiddish speaking Jews in like the nineteen
tens in New York City. And later she moved to
Harlem to a black and Jewish community, and immediately started
(12:50):
hiring non white people for the library, like Catherine Allen,
a black woman. She also organized the nineteen twenty one
exhibition of Quote Egro art at the library, which, according
to author George Hutchinson Quote marked the beginning of the
Harlem Renaissance in the visual arts. She made shit happen then,
(13:12):
also in nineteen twenty one, she hired Poora Belprey because
there was a sizable and growing Puerto Rican community in
the neighborhood as well. She actually first tried to hire Alease,
the sister who got married, but then Elise's husband told
her she wasn't allowed to go get this job. It's
like a throwaway line, like most of the things you
(13:32):
read are like was offered to Elise who was busy
and couldn't do it, And then you read the like
slightly more in depth piece and is like her husband
told her she couldn't, so she didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
She wasn't allowed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, unlike Pora, who did not get married until she
was forty, which is probably the better way to go
about it in certain circumstances like an incredibly patriarchal culture,
of the United States at the time, and so Pooro
was hired as the Hispanic assistant, working in both the
adult and children's rooms of the library. Her passion was
(14:04):
clearly the children's room. This was the one hundred and
thirty fifth Street branch of the library in Harlem during
the Harlem Renaissance, and soon the library was the center
of that cultural renaissance, or was a center of that
cultural renaissance. And I still haven't deep dive of the
Harlem Renaissance, and I'm not going to do it today,
but we've touched on a few times, like on our
episodes about Ben Fletcher, the black labor organizer from Philly. Also,
(14:28):
my great grandmother was like a white artist who knew
a lot of the people in that scene, especially where
it overlapped with like leftism more broadly, and so I
really want to learn more about it at some point,
but I didn't this time. Suffice it to say, Harlem
was the coolest shit place in the nineteen twenties where
black people did a ton of amazing cultural stuff, and
(14:48):
the library was part of it. It was intentionally part
of it, because librarians didn't start off as magically known
as a place where people could meet and do things
like they were seen as white places for white stuff,
until all these people at the one hundred and thirty
fifth Street branch changed that. They held talks by Langston
(15:10):
Hughes and a bunch of other folks, and one librarian
later wrote about this time quote, if you are familiar
with Harlem, you are aware of the fact that the
streets are frequently made impassable by the many soapbox speakers
and their enthusiastic audiences. It occurred to us that if
people will listen to politics and patent medicines, then they
will listen to education too, provided it as well presented
(15:33):
to them. So we employed one of the most eloquent
and most popular of these speakers and paid him to
address large crowds at strategic corners on the streets of Harlem.
Once a week. These people were urged to come to
a meeting at the library. Some two thousand people were
reached each week. If out of these fifty appeared at
the library, we were confident that something worthwhile had been accomplished,
(15:58):
and so they just yeah, got people to come to
the library. The other thing that I think is really
important to take away from that is from the very beginning,
soap boxing, which everyone understands is the podcasting of ye
oldie times, frequently mixed uh politics and patent medicines, which
brings us to the next segment of this show, the advertisers,
(16:28):
and we're back, and so yeah, this library developed the
division of Negro Literature History in Prince in nineteen twenty five.
Ernestine Rose also helped the first black woman get through
library school, a woman named Nella Larson, who worked for
a while at the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch,
but is much more famous for her place in literature
as a writer of American modernism. And it's like the
(16:49):
most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. And there are
biographies about her. And so I'm like, nope, too much
of a side character. Can't because one day probably topic
of her own.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
We love bonus episodes on our show, so you should
do bonus episodes with this. I'm just saying I do
two a week.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I mean I guess you do do five? Yeah, all right,
all right, fair.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Enough, You're doing great, keep going.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I am so impressed that you also still have time
to come on other people's shows. I am genuinely.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I'm honored for you and for Sophie anytime, all the time.
Oh thanks, Yes, I love this show. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah. The other thing that happened in nineteen twenty five
is that Poora Bell Prey enrolled in library school and
soon she's going to become the first Puerto Rican library
in New York City and probably the country. I really
liked the source I read that was like, yeah, we know,
she's the first Puerto Rican library in New York City,
and it's like in parentheses it's like which realistically probably
(17:52):
means the country, but they know they can't say it
because it's not. Because I really appreciate that verified because
like I everyone knows that listen sins to this. I'm
an enemy of any time anyone says the first person
who did something something because right, like you can't prove
it just anyway whatever my brain works in a very
specific way.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh no, I'm with you. Like when we talk about
first on anything, it's understanding that it has to do
with who's writing the history, where the history historical contexts
come from, and who's also claiming what. So it's always
asterisk because it also you might they just may not
be discovered. And that's okay, because that's some amazing things
when you get to discover new information.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Totally, and being the first isn't the only thing that matters,
you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I'm sure she was just excited to be able to
share her knowledge and her love and her passion.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, and she does it. She does this so much. Yeah,
she gets involved in writing folklore. She once said, quote,
one of my duties in the children's room was to
read the fairy tale shelves. Thus the folklore of the
world opened for me. As I shelved the books, I
searched for some of the folk tales I had heard home,
(19:01):
there wasn't even one. A sudden feeling of loss rose
within me. And so she's at library school and she's
this teacher, another libraryan folklorist, a white woman named Mary
gold Davis. So during that class she writes a children's
book called Peezzi Martina. This goes on to be published
in nineteen thirty two as the first Spanish language children's
(19:24):
book published by a mainstream press in the United States.
And it is a romance between a cockroach and a mouse.
And she is very clear this is not her story.
She heard this from her grandmother and it is a
Puerto Rican story. Like a lot of I've only been
able to track down some of her stuff, and it'll
specifically say like a Puerto Rican story rather than like
(19:45):
it'll have her name as the author. But instead of saying, like,
buy what about prey, it'll say, like a Puerto Rican story.
It's it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah. It's so interesting when you see people with the
love for their heritage, because we've seen it more and more,
thank goodness, with like the indigenous people bringing their own
folklore or like any kind of storytelling to life, and
they share it with people and they make sure to
write it because they we know with the colonization, we
(20:14):
know and all this stuff white people trying to erase history.
Part of raising that history is those lores and trying
to make them disappear or trying to make them evil.
We know all about that. So having people who take
the opportunity and time to write it down so that
they can share it and be preserved is such a
(20:34):
phenomenal thing to see and being able to see their
love for their heritage even like it just feels like
I'm being honored, Like I'm being privileged to see and
hear about their culture, and I love that aspect. Folklore
is so beautiful to me just because of that. When
I started learning more about like Korean folklores, I was like, what,
And you just feel this sense of connectedness to something
(20:55):
that you may not have like in so long or ever.
So that's something to two with, like, we should definitely
be honoring people like her, Yeah, who are preserving such
tales and traditions. I love that.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
No, that makes a lot of sense to me. And
it's interesting because I one of the things that I
end up I read a lot of like nineteenth century
folk tales, or rather nineteenth century writing down of folk tales,
and so a lot of the older ones, the first
ones in English are often written by these sort of
white interlopers or like white observers who are trying to
be good.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
It's like kind of all over the board. They're either like,
check out this wacky thing that they believe in Japan,
and other times they're like, I'm white and I've lived
in Japan for forty years and I've tried really hard
to do this right, you know. Yeah, and it's like
really interesting, but people actually writing from that culture, which
is what we see more now is you're more guaranteed
(21:49):
to get the like actual love of that culture instead
of like yeah, and it's funny too because you'll still
even see, like check out this weird thing the Ukrainians
believe over there in weird Land, you know, because the
Ukrainians weren't white in the Victorian mind, like, I mean whatever,
they weren't.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Right. It's complicated, but it's complication.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, But it's interesting they bring up this thing about
writing these stories down because it's when we talk about next.
Libraries had a problem. They were colonized as fuck right,
as like an institution, So the only real stories by
the library's mind are the ones that are written down.
So storytelling for Storytelling Hour had to come from a book.
(22:29):
Western libraries didn't understand the idea of oral literacy yet, right,
the idea that you can be aware of your culture
through oral traditions. Poor A Bell Pray broke that she
was the first person probably to appeal and win the
right to tell stories that had never been written down.
During storytime, Mary gold Davis, her teacher, told her, tell
(22:54):
your stories, but only tell the children that none of
these stories have been written down, but maybe someday they will.
It's like this like almost paternalistic, but it's still this
like love where like, yeah, this is an amazing but
one day they'll be real stories. But it's still like
it's still in the pretty genuine like poor actually has
very She thought very highly of the white women librarians
who sought her out and nurtured her career and helped
(23:15):
her break into this white dominated field. Right, So she
told the stories that eventually would find their way into
another one of her books, The Tiger and the Rabbit,
which was the first English language collection of Puerto Rican
folklore in the US. And she starts writing, and her
branch is doing amazing stuff in the black community. And
then in nineteen twenty nine, she transfers to one hundred
(23:37):
and fifteenth Street branch in a Puerto Rican community, and
it's here that she really hits her stride and starts
kicking ass as a librarian. As far as I can tell,
she pioneered Spanish language content in public libraries. I expect
she did it as part of a team of people
who are also amazing, right, But she worked her ass
(23:57):
off to get the community involved in the library. At
some point she watched a puppet show at her branch
and was like, oh, this is the shit puppets rule.
I'm sure that's how she said it. And so for
the rest of her life she worked with kids to
put on puppet shows because that was part of it,
was that by doing puppets you could bring the kids
into it, right. And she went around to churches, to
(24:19):
community centers, to neighborhood organizations and schools to put on
shows and like just do outreach into community. She did
bilingual shows regularly too, not just Spanish language shows, and
this just like hadn't been done. She put on events
for three Kings Day, a Puerto Rican holiday, and she
said this quote indirectly presented the library to this group
(24:43):
in a way that no other activity could have done.
Their confidence was gained. The library put on complete programs
in Spanish for children and for adults, and basically they
did at the one hundred and fifteenth branch what the one
hundred and thirty fifth branch did for the black community.
There's a downside to this, although I've read conflicting tales
of it, there's a problem if I actually look into
(25:04):
too many sources as they all start arguing with each other,
you know, right, Okay, so this isn't the librarian's fault,
but instead of racist city government's fault. Basically, these two
libraries served as quote ghettos where all black and Spanish
language content could be put, where all black and Latine
workers could be hired. So it was like, you try
(25:25):
and get hired as a black worker, and they'll be like, oh,
we'll go up to one hundred and thirty fifth and
they're like, that's not where I live, you know, and
they'd be like, oh, we already have a black library,
like we don't need another one. And so that's a problem.
And this limits their career advancement, right because you can
only work in this one place.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Right, instead of opening spots or making opening doors, They're like,
compete with each other. Here you go, good luck. And
this is because you need to fight this space. The
small amount of space is all we have for you.
But anyway, keep going.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yes, So in nineteen thirty nine, the Puerto Rican community
had moved a bit in the city, so she moved
once again to East one hundred and tenth Street and
kept up all the same stuff. Bilingual story hour reading
club's puppet theater, you name it. But you know what
they didn't have at these libraries ads because they were
(26:16):
tax funded instead of funded by private companies. But we,
on the other hand, are funded by private companies. And
that is just the compromises that everyone makes all the time,
like the following compromises. Here they are and we're back
(26:39):
in nineteen forty. She goes to the ala, the American
Library Association convention in Cincinnati, and while she's there, she
meets a musician and composer named Clarence Cameron White, who
is we're going to get to the first like potential
drama that I'm entirely inferring. The way that the story
is presented is that she meets him in the and
(27:00):
they get married a couple of years later, and everything's
happy and great. And I started writing it by reading
about him and being like, oh, he was recently widowed
or widowered or whatever, he recently lost his wife. The
complication she meets him in nineteen forty his wife doesn't
die until nineteen forty two, and they don't get married
till nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What happened, Oh, drama?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Probably they were just friends and then yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Were they Can they be friends? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean canon they Yeah, man and a woman doesn't
seem possible. But like a figure like this, every version
of her history is going to be a little bit sanitized.
I mean I found no scandal. Like, I'm not like
particularly worried that there's some like crazy skeleton in her closet.
But it's like when you're talking about like a children's
puppeteer person like, no one's like trying to write about
(27:50):
anything salacious, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Being the other woman, you know, her personality and the
everything about her reminds me of someone like my old
drama teacher, who are so passionate and so performed, Like
they perform and they love and they tell stories and
they understand the importance of puppetry, like and bringing in,
like acting out these different characters. I could only imagine
(28:15):
what kind of performances she gave in her storytelling, and
with that, what type of passion she has and just
like in her imagination being able to relay these stories
in a way that she was so successful enough to
be known to do this as well as writing these stories.
I just imagine she's just one of those people. No,
totally that you can't help but notice anyway. Yeah, and
(28:36):
then the effort she puts in telling these stories is
not telling a story, it is living that story for
the children or with the children. And I could only
imagine that's kind of how she also lived life.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I believe it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
So who knows, maybe some drama does happen, because when
you have that much passion, you know, Yeah, that makes
her interesting.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
No, I believe it. And it's it's interesting, right because
you're talking about someone who never had children and gets
married at forty, right, and.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So you're my type of a woman.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You're talking about someone who like either lived the like
cat lady life or lived a like pretty wildlife, you know,
and there's like.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
We exist to not have either of those things. Margaret,
how dare you true? You're with us? What are you
talking about?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
It's true, right, as an unmarried person in her forties,
no children, Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And also and the
reason that I mentioned, my great grandmother, who's like basically
living in New York around the same time as an artist,
also didn't get married until forty and then had like
one child I knew was and that's like wasn't normal
at all for someone living, you know, a woman living
(29:40):
in the early part of the twentieth century, right, So
she falls in love with Clarence White. You know, he's
got his own Wikipedia page as a composer and was
one of the most prominent violinists in the country. And
after they get married, Pura takes a leave of absence
from the library to follow him around tour for a bit,
(30:01):
and then she goes back to the library and then
she's like, you know what, I actually want to focus
on my writing, and so she just kind of wants
to be doing the art stuff and hell yeah, And
so she does that for a while. She writes. As
far as I can tell, she keeps up the storytelling
and the puppets during this time, but I'm not one
hundred percent certain, but it's like implied, and she writes
like eight books. Seventeen years into married life, her husband
(30:25):
dies of larynx cancer in nineteen sixty. She goes back
to the library to a new post one that I
think they might have made just for her, the Spanish
children specialist. And so at this point that whole thing
about like the Spanish language stuff only being at one
or two branches is not the case that was actually
some of the stuff that there seemed to be drama about.
(30:47):
Is like I read some people arguing that that sort
of gettoization was not as prominent as other people were claiming,
and that it was other issues keeping people from advancing,
and I read a lot of drama about employment discrimination
in the nineteen Thirtiesically, anyway, at this point, Spanish language
stuff all over wherever it's needed, and so she just
(31:08):
goes to every branch where it's needed and helps plan
events and helps bilingualize the New York City Public Library system,
which is, if that's all she had done, it would
have been amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Huge.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
If all she had done was write those children's stories,
it would have been amazing. If all she'd done was
be a puppeteer, would have been amazing. Then when she
was sixty five, she was forced to retire because all
city employees at the time were forced to retire at
sixty five. I don't know if that's still the case
or not. I actually wonder because at the top, I
was saying that there's like all these documents suggest she
(31:40):
was not born in nineteen oh three, but she told
people she was born in nineteen oh three. You know,
I wonder if it was so that she could keep
working a couple extra years smart, but I'm not sure,
you know, that's entirely my conjecture. She died in nineteen
eighty two, but her legacy continues to this day. Starting
in a Night eighteen ninety six, the American Library Organization gives
(32:02):
out an award in Belpre's name every year for children's
books by Latino authors. A librarian originally from the Dominican
Republic named Viannella Rivas told NPR in twenty sixteen, quote,
because of her, we have a story time in Spanish,
we have computer classes in Spanish, and I feel like
as a Latina librarian, we have a responsibility to continue
(32:24):
doing the work that she started. Shockingly, her books are
out of print right now, despite her being the earliest
known Afro Caribin American writer, despite there being an award
in her name. And yeah, there are still three more
librarians on that list of cool librarians that I was handed.
So expect to be returning to this subject. But I
(32:48):
wanted to read some of her stories on book club,
but I haven't found a PDF of it yet. The
Internet Archive had one, but they're hacked. Right now, I
found one really short story and so fuck it, I'm
going to read it to you all.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Now, do you have a puppet.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I'll pretend to have a putty.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, what the full experience?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
You all should act as though I have a really
amazing puppet.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's actually interesting that you talked about when you were
talking about folklore earlier, and we were talking about how
like indigenous folklore is perceived by others. Right, this story
is going to use the word Indian to describe the
people that's talking about, right, and it's gonna be describing
indigenous people. But the American North American conception of race
(33:32):
isn't necessarily going to apply one to one to in
a Puerto Rican context, and like so it's like interesting
because I can't say as cleanly how it relates to
indigenous culture. Right. Basically, that's my way of saying. If
the story had been written by a white person, I
would be suspect of it, but it was not, gotcha.
(33:54):
The legend of the Hummingbird from Puerto Rico by poor
a Bell prey between the towns of Kayi and Cidra
far up in the hills, there was once a small
pool fed by a waterfall that tumbled down the side
of the mountain. The pool was surrounded by pomorosa trees,
and the Indians used to call it Pamerosa Pool. It
was the favorite place of Alida, the daughter of an
(34:15):
Indian chief, a man of power and wealth among the
people of the hills. One day, when Alida had come
to the pool to rest after a long walk, a
young Indian came there to pick some fruit from the trees.
Alida was surprised for he was not of her tribe.
Yet he said he was no stranger to the pool.
This was where he had first seen Alida, and he
had often returned since then to pick the fruit. Hoping
(34:38):
to see her again, he told her about himself to
make her feel at home. He confessed with honesty and
frankness that he was a member of the dreaded Carab
tribe that had so often attacked the island of Barenkan.
As a young boy, he had been left behind after
one of those raids, and he had stayed on the
island ever since. Alida listened closely to his story and
(35:00):
the two became friends. They met again in the days
that followed and their friendship grew stronger. Alida admired the
young man's courage in living among his enemies. She learned
to call him by his Carab name, Taru, and he
called her Alida, just as her own people did. Before long,
their friendship had turned into love. Their meetings by the
pool were always brief. Alida was afraid their secret might
(35:23):
be discovered, and careful though she was. There came a
day when someone saw them and told her father. Alida
was forbidden to visit the Pomerosa Pool, and to put
an end to her romance with the stranger, her father
decided to marry her to a man of his own,
choosing preparations for the wedding started at once. Alida was
torn with grief, and one evening she cried out to
(35:46):
her god, Oh yuki U, help me kill me, or
do what you will with me, but do not let
me marry this man whom I do not love, and
the great God Yukiyu took pity on her and changed
her into a delicate red flower. Meanwhile, Taru, knowing nothing
of Alida's sorrow, still waited for her by the Pomerosa Pool.
(36:07):
Day after day. He waited. Sometimes he stayed there until
a mantle of stars was spread across the sky. One night,
the moon took pity on him. Taro. She called from
her place high above the stars, Oh, Taru, wait no
longer for Alida. Your secret was made known, and Alita
was to be married to a man of her father's choosing.
In her grief, she called to her god, Yukiyu. He
(36:29):
heard her plea for help and changed her into a
red flower. Ahi ahe cried, Taru, Oh Moon, what is
the name of the red flower? Only Yukau knows that.
The moon replied. Then Taro called out, O yuka U,
God of my Alida, help me too, help me to
find her. And just as the great God had heard
Alida's plea, he listened now to Taru and decided to
(36:53):
help him. There by the Pomerosa Pool, before the moon
and the silent stars, the Great God changed Taru into
a small, many colored bird, Fly Calibri, and find your
love among the flowers, he said. Off went the Calibri,
flying swiftly, and as he flew, his wings made a
sweet humming sound. In the morning, the Indians saw a
(37:16):
new bird darting around among the flowers, swift as an
arrow and brilliant as a jewel. They heard the humming
of its wings, and in amazement, they saw it hover
in the air over every blossom, kissing the petals of
the flowers with its long, slender bill. They liked the
new bird with the music in its wings, and they
called it humming bird. Ever since then, the little many
(37:39):
colored bird has hovered over every flower he finds, but
returns most often to the flowers that are red. He
is still looking, always looking for the one red flower
that will be his lost Alita. He has not found
her yet. That's the story.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
All these do remind me of the indigenous tales. And
the god you were talking about is a Tano god,
which is of the gods of the Puerto Rican indigenous peoples.
I have a failing if we were able to dig
more into her ancestral understand she is probably a part
of that indigenous group because that's from they're from her
(38:18):
area as well, like they are from that area. So
I absolutely believe these are tales from her her community. Yeah,
which is gorgeous, and I love that she was able
to preserve that and share that because that's what we
know when it comes to like indigenous and like especially
older religious groups. Is the is the stories of creation,
(38:39):
of love in creation. It is so beautiful and I
love that she preserved that so we could hear these stories, I.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Know, and I like, I want to find so many
more of them, and I guess I have to wait
for the Internet archive to be unhacked or I need to.
Like I found like some used versions of the books,
but they were like you know how Amazon.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Automout eBay level of like yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, like they're like price jacked up to two hundred
and fifty dollars or whatever, you know, right, and yeah, no,
I I I find it fascinating, and I find it
fascinating that they're out of print, and you know, I
I hope someone does something about that, but right, especially
because like, yeah, I love reading the earliest versions of
folk tales I can find, but usually that means reading
(39:25):
white interpretations of folk tales and so reading not that,
but the oldest that I can find is like for me,
the sweet Spot, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Right, and on top of that, someone who heard it
from an area that she knew, who was familiar with
that that was her home.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Like one of the best parts to this is learning
about indigenous people that I didn't know anything about. I
know nothing about yuko U and akabath God in itself
and which we love on our show. We love doing
like mythical goddesses and creatures and all of those, because
you know, there's so much power behind that, Yeah, and
the reason people believe in them. But not knowing that
obviously Puerto Rico, it makes sense to know there's an
(40:04):
indigenous group there, yeah, and community there that needs to
be preserved and their history should be preserved and deserved
to be preserved. Yeah, probably should be in power whatever whatnot.
But all of that to say is now, like you
brought this understanding through the talks of a library. I love.
I love the connectedness of.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It, I know, and I love that it's like the
work that she did about keeping this stuff alive. And
then like, obviously language is an important part of I
mean obviously Spanish is in the indigenous language, but compared
to English for an immigrant community, it's like really important
to have stuff specifically, Yeah, just like making the library
(40:43):
a space that's actually for the communities as part of
I just I was really impressed by her story and
I like, and it's a lot of stuff that I
take for granted, Like even the story about the origin
of libraries. I had just been like, right, oh, yeah,
of course a country has to a country has to
have roads, a country has to have like lending libraries.
Otherwise it's not really a country, is it. And it's like, well, actually, uh,
(41:05):
you know, we're pretty new to having them.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Like it's also a story about understanding how important that
history is and librarians are and what they bring to
a community as we're in one of the worst states
of for librarians and libraries and banned books, and a
reminder like like how important these stories are that so
many cannot understand because culturally we should be able to
(41:31):
learn about these things, and we people should know about
these groups of people who have always existed, existed before them,
you know, for us. So all of that is beautiful,
as well as the fact that you know, I love
things like the little libraries. You know that you see
the look at birthhouse looking yeah, libraries. But in order
(41:52):
to like kind of take back control from those who
are trying to ban books and trying to like make
libraries the enemies somehow, when stories like these are so
important and then people like her brought traditions and tell
folklore to life to children who didn't understand or maybe
for a long time, especially you know, you know, as
(42:15):
a person who immigrated to the US was taught to
learn what learned US culture and white culture essentially to
truly understand the country if you want to be a citizen,
instead of understanding that their culture was just as important
to the makeup of this area, specifically New Yorkers who
are from Puerto Rico and children who may have been
(42:37):
born in New York but their families are from Puerto
Rico and then being able to learn about their culture
and to appreciate their own culture. Like, wow, she did
so much in such an early time. Obviously, I'm very
excited you opened up this big box and I'm like,
oh my god, I love everything about this, including the libraries.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, no, totally. And it's just like I want to
fly on the wall. That stuff so bad, you know,
like and even it ties into what you're saying just now,
ties into how one of the problems with the early libraries,
including you know, some of the women's ones and the
free black ones and stuff, is they fell into this
idea that like this is for the improvement of people
by reading philosophy and stuff. And I'll read some philosophy
(43:18):
here and there. Right, I'm not I get it. I'm
I think that that stuff matters. But this idea that
fiction is distinct as this like lesser thing is something
that we're finally starting to break away from. And I
think part of the way that we break away from
it is exactly what you're talking about about. How these
stories and this idea of culture, like stories are how
(43:38):
you preserve culture in a lot of ways, and so
like stories matter, fiction matters just as much, you know. Yeah,
And I love I just think libraries are cool. I've
already spoken it too so far on this tour, and
like I can't wait to speak at more of them.
And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
One of my favorite things. Again, like I will continue
to go to the different cities or different places and
find libraries. When York and we went to the library immediately,
like we've explored everything. But thank you. I was going
to say one of the two things. One, I love
that story. I love being able to hear her writing
because it is it's exactly right, you know, when you
thirst for a cultural like folklore, that is exactly what
(44:18):
I would like to hear like that was perfectly done,
and you telling it was so perfectly like. Yeah, obviously
Margaret is a writer. She's definitely a storyteller. It is
like being able to.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Hear it through you.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Both of those were Shew's kiss. So thank you for
sharing with me.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Oh, thank you, well, thanks for coming on to my
episode about libraries. There's going to be more of them.
And yeah, if people want to hear more stories about
stuff that their mom never told them and then accidentally
ask really personal questions that you don't intend to ask,
where can they do that?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, we do talk a lot about our trauma as
in fact, I started Stuff Mom Never Told You by
talking about the METO movement and the trauma. So there
you go. But that stuff Mom Never Told You you
can listen to us wherever you listen to your podcast.
We have twelve.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Years worth of episodes, so if you want to go
listen to all the different hosts that's been there, historical context,
you want to hear our reactions to like different elections,
which is really still stings, you can.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Do that as well. We also have a book and
it's called Stuff Mom Never Told You. Actually at libraries.
We were able to find them at the Seattle Library
and a New York library. Cool Boston, No who. He
hadn't written the book yet, So if you want to
go check it out at the library, is there?
Speaker 6 (45:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
And if it's not, you should request it.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah. Please. Also, you can find me on McVeigh sam
Instagram for my doggy pictures.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
That is what Instagram is for as far as I'm
concerned exactly, Well, if you want to find me on tour,
you can look at my Instagram or my substack and
I'll be posting tour dates. And if you don't live
in the US, you can tell me that. You can
be like, why are you coming to where I live?
And then the answer is the aforementioned dog. And on
some level I'm aware that I could probably find someone
(46:05):
to watch my dog for long enough to go to
a different country, but why would I want to. I
like my dog more than I like you, dear listener,
And that's not even a slight against you. It's just
how much I like my dog. But that's unrelated. And
also I have a book out called The Sapling Cage,
just what I'm a tour about, and you should go
read it. Is fiction. I have a bunch of other
books too, including the most entertainingly titled is Escape from
(46:28):
Insil Island, So you can go read that if you want.
And you could also listen to Cooler Zone Media because
nothing would be funnier than watching me complain about ads
and then there's no ads and wouldn't that be funny?
And also you can listen to all the cool Zone
media podcasts that way, including an awful lot of shows
(46:48):
including Wait, there's one I really liked recently. Oh, there's
a really good it could happen here about the future
of coffee done by Prop who does hood politics with Prop,
and it is like one of the best encapsulations of
climate crisis and also how capitalism and extractive practices work,
and also how cooperativism. It was just like, I don't
(47:11):
even drink coffee. It's also super funny. Yeah, I've been
long holding that Prop is my favorite explained current events
person in my life.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
He starts off the episode by just singing a song
and total so you get past that part.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, that always throws me off. When host starts singing
or rapping, I'm like, what the what's happening? I'm never prepared. Yeah,
but he's like a professional rapper. Yeah, Like, oh, I'm
just good. It's still stocking though to see it live,
like if I'm on my Crsta body.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Love but stay for the stay for the vibes, Stay
for the vibes.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
And that's it. We're here at the end of the show.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
Cool People Who Did Stuff is a production of Cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit
our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (48:16):
Shout out to the team at Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff for putting this together, letting us run it,
having Samantha on.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, it's such a fantastic podcast, really great history of
revolutionaries who've done incredible things, and I love everything that
Margaret does. We need to have our back on the
show because she's actually written several books, so we should
definitely have her back off of her newsbook too, because it's,
from what I understand, really good.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yes, yes, we should. Well.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
In the meantime, listeners, if you would like to contact us,
you can You can email us a Stuffania mom Stuff
at ihartmedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at
stuff We Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We
have a tea public store, and we have a book
you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as
always to our super producer Christina, our excited producer Maya, and.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Our contributor Joey. Thank you and listeners.
Speaker 6 (49:08):
Thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You This
podcast from iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha. Welcome to stuff I
never told you production by her too, and.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to a very special crossover. Is that what we're
gonna call the Sandy Yeah? Okay crossover. So, as you
already know if you've been listening, I was a guest
on Margaret Kiljoy's podcast called Cold People Who Did Cool Stuff,
And this last time that I was on there, I
(00:39):
got to hear the history of the Public Library and
it was such a fascinating episode. I love these types
of episode, and I've talked about it a few times,
to the point that I think we've even talked about
the native people's in Puerto Rico, the Tano, which is
what we talked about a little bit on the episode.
So I asked, UH if we could actually on our
(01:01):
feed because I loved loved this episode so much, specifically
part two, and it is titled Poora Belprey, the Puerto
Rican Librarian who brought a bilingual storytelling to New York.
So I really wanted y'all to be able to hear this,
and you should. I also go back and listen to
their first part of this episode because this is part two,
(01:21):
but please, please, please, enjoy this crossover episode with myself
and Margaret Kiljoy talking about this amazing person, Pura Belprey
Cools Media.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that despite all the bad things that
are happening, there's people who try to do things about
the bad things that are happening. And I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy and with me this week to talk about libraries.
It's Samantha McVay. Hi, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I'm great. Thanks for having me on again. I love
being a part of the show.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yay, Yeah, Okay, I have a question. You're the host
of stuff mom never told you? Correct, I don't know
that your relationship with your own mother. Does your mom
ever get mad about the implication that she never told
you these things?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So that's a loaded question. I don't have time. This
is a real loaded question.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Okay to this.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
When I told my mother I was quitting my social
work job to become a podcaster, which, as you would expect,
first thing was radio. What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
That was that? And then it went into you know
feminist show. Oh no, you've become one of those people
who was ruining the world and that proceeded to a
cry session and I was ignoring each other for a while.
Better yet, speaking of libraries, I actually myself, my co host,
recently wrote a book based on our show, Intersectional Feminism,
(02:50):
and I have completely hidden that from my mother in
fear of her being angry with me.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh shit, I'm sorry that I brought it up. Thank
you for your honesty about it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Anyway, loaded questions, But I will say, because my mother
is absolutely against those things, there's a lot that my
mother did not tell me.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, so you have a lot of material for the show.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Mine would be the like, there's them. I think it's
reductrous or something has a meme or headline or whatever
of a you know, parent just accidentally forgot to mention
that health issue they've been struggling with for forty years
that runs in the family. Yeah, you know, I'm just like, whoops,
never brought that one up.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I can't add that to the trauma that I've endured
because I'm adopted.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So oh yeah, no, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
There's so many loaded things that we're talking about. I
apologize for the trauma dumping.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, nope. Now I'm just gonna let me see if
I can come up with another thing to accidentally bring
up that.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I uh as you can see I'm handling it well.
You do great? Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sophie is our producer. Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I was like when you asked that question, I was like, oh,
I knows.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
She knows a little bit of trauma. We kind of
bonded over it. I was like, listen noted questions. You
can't come in with those types of questions as an intro.
I love making an awkward presence.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna come up with
some even worse ones later. That's my plan. Our audio
engineer is Rory Hi.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Rory Hiroy Hello, sorry about the trauma dubbing on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Ar theme music was written for us by Unwoman and
the main subject this week is New York and probably
the US's first Puerto Rican librarian. She was an Afro
Puerto Rican author and puppeteer and tri lingual hero named
Puta Beppre and she is a fascinating subject. I couldn't
(04:51):
find a biography on her, like a book length biography
on her, but there's a lot of academic papers librarians.
There's a lot of academic paper about her and a
lot of like pop articles about her, so I put
together the best that I can. Her name was the
first one on the list that was given to me
by a librarian at the conference this year, And yeah,
(05:13):
I was gonna do them all, but it looks like
I'm doing porhm and the rest will do it some
other time. Poora Belprey was born on February second. Normally
you'd say what year someone was born after you say
the date. Who fucking knows what year she was born.
Sources will claim eighteen ninety nine, nineteen oh one, nineteen
(05:34):
oh two, and nineteen oh three. She claimed nineteen oh three,
so I'm going to go with that one. I will
let her self identify birth year. It's almost like weird, Well,
they're supporting documents claiming other years, so it's not just
a like we don't trust her or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
She was generally reasonably cagey about her time in Puerto
Rico as a kid, and which, you know whatever, Like
no one needs to talk about their childhood unless the
host of podcast brings it up rudely at the top
of an episode, So like, she's not a public figure
she's a librarian. You know, a lot of what is
known about her are educated guesses. But she was one
(06:12):
of five kids who grew up in a loving and
religious family, most likely Catholic, but she didn't seem to
write or talk much about religion as best as I
can tell. She also seems to have written or talked
very little about being black. We've talked about this before
on the show, like on the episodes we did about
the Young Lords, which is this Puerto Rican I guess
called sort of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers, and that's fair,
(06:34):
but also they're peers, so it's like, well, then the
Black Panthers are the Black Young Lords whatever, you know? Right, Anyway,
we talked about how Puerto Rican racial identity, at least
historically looks really different than race looks in the continental US.
So it's like, makes a lot of sense that she
identifies strongly as Puerto Rican and that is mostly what
(06:56):
she talked about. She later married a black man in
regularly lived in black neighborhoods, but it seems that her
identity was primarily Puerto Rican. What she did write and
talk about was her connection to the legacy of Puerto
Rican folklore. She wrote quote, I grew up in a
home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed
(07:17):
down by word of mouth for generations. As a child,
I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I had heard.
The characters became quite real to me. I remember during
school recess that some of us would gather under the
shade of the tamar d tree. There we would take
turns telling stories. The best guess that people make it
(07:38):
almost feels like ghoulish, the way that people write biographies,
where you're like trying to dredge up this stuff that
people clearly just didn't really want to talk about, and
there's no reason that anyone should really care about the real,
specific nitty gritty of the class upbringing of this you
know person, But yeah, you know, here we are. The
best guess is that she was in a family those
sort of culturally middle class, but without money, right, without
(08:01):
much money. Her father was a building contractor who moved
the family around a lot for work, and she grew
up speaking Spanish, English and French, and both of her
parents were literate. Her older sister at Lease, taught in
Puerto Rico for ten years before moving to New York City.
This is one of the earlier waves of Puerto Rican
movement into the US. And again, if you want to
(08:21):
hear way more about that, listen to our episodes about
the young lords. Porta graduated high school in nineteen nineteen,
then started college at the University of Puerto Rico. But
when Alise got married in nineteen twenty, the whole family
traveled to New York City for the wedding and Poro
was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm staying in New York
(08:42):
And so she stayed in New York and at first
she got work as a seamstress, which was one of
the main jobs available to Puerto Rican immigrants at the time.
But then in nineteen twenty one, she was hired by
the Public Library of New York, which means I can
introduce another hero of the episode, Ernestine Rose never met
(09:03):
anyone named Ernestine. One day, I'm going to mean a
trans woman named Ernestine, because trans women love to name
ourselves like weird old timing names, said Margaret. And I
definitely know some like Agatha's and you know, whatever, good name.
I haven't met a Gertrude yet, but it'll happen, oh hope.
So Ernestine Rose was named after Ernestine Rose, which made
(09:27):
her hard to look up because it was a much
more famous Ernestine Rose. The first Ernestine Rose was an
abolitionist and suffragist who I don't know a ton about,
but Wikipedia called her the first Jewish feminist, or rather
Wikipedia's as that other people called her that, and who
am I to argue with. I didn't read much about her.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
We're going to mark that, okay, I.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Know, because it was like, you can only follow each
rabbit hole like a couple steps, right, Ernestine Rose, the
younger one is like the already the side character. And
then I was like, now I'm gonna read about this.
I'm like, wait a second, I doing I have to
record at some point?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You just chase after so many Yeah, how do you
handle the like I have so many mini series episodes
because it ends up being like I have a thought
and then that thought turns into see, we did a
whole religious trauma and I thought it might be two parter.
It's thirteen parts all an hour long.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Amazing. I really want to listen to that one.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So it goes bad. I don't do well. I don't
do well.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
How long ago? How far back?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Last year, this year, last year, beginning of this year,
because we were talking about just overall the new anti
feminist movement and then talking about anti abortion movements and
how it's very much rooted into religious trauma and white supremacy.
So it became a whole thing, and then we went
down so many rabbit holes. But it's specific honestly to
American Baptists and like that, we don't even talk much
(10:54):
about Catholicism. Like that's how deep we went in without
going there.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, it was a thing.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, okay, So the answer is that you would also
now be doing a whole side episode about Ernestine Rose
one and Ernestine Rose two. I appreciate that you're.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Doing better at controlling this and actually being really really
like following through thanks, as opposed to myself, who I'm like,
I can definitely do this in thirteen parts, let's go.
So you're doing great.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, i'much discipline. So our Ernestine that we're
going to talk about the librarian Ernestine. We're going to
call her Ernestine Junior, even though she isn't related to
Ernestine Senior, just because it was funny to me. Both
of them seemed cool as hell. Ernestine Junior is this
white lady who may or may not have been Jewish.
She apparently claimed she was Jewish, and then one historian
(11:45):
I read disputes this. Who graduated from library school in
nineteen oh five, making her one of the first bona
fide librarians in the United States of America, and she
hit the ground running to try and make libraries cooler.
By nineteen oh eight, she was working hard to make
sure that whatever library she was in was actually integrated
(12:06):
into the ethnic community that it was part of. So
that's like the big thing we're going to talk about,
is integrating libraries into the communities that they're part of,
instead of being sort of, you know, a place that
shows up and is like everyone should think like these
white people think. And at the beginning, this meant serving
the Yiddish and Russian speaking Jewish community that she worked in,
(12:29):
which is probably the community we've talked about a thousand
times on this show because that's where all the weird
the anarchists and communists from Russia were hanging out because
they were all Yiddish speaking Jews in like the nineteen
tens in New York City. And later she moved to
Harlem to a black and Jewish community, and immediately started
(12:50):
hiring non white people for the library, like Catherine Allen,
a black woman. She also organized the nineteen twenty one
exhibition of Quote Egro art at the library, which, according
to author George Hutchinson Quote marked the beginning of the
Harlem Renaissance in the visual arts. She made shit happen then,
(13:12):
also in nineteen twenty one, she hired Poora Belprey because
there was a sizable and growing Puerto Rican community in
the neighborhood as well. She actually first tried to hire Alease,
the sister who got married, but then Elise's husband told
her she wasn't allowed to go get this job. It's
like a throwaway line, like most of the things you
(13:32):
read are like was offered to Elise who was busy
and couldn't do it, And then you read the like
slightly more in depth piece and is like her husband
told her she couldn't, so she didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
She wasn't allowed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, unlike Pora, who did not get married until she
was forty, which is probably the better way to go
about it in certain circumstances like an incredibly patriarchal culture,
of the United States at the time, and so Pooro
was hired as the Hispanic assistant, working in both the
adult and children's rooms of the library. Her passion was
(14:04):
clearly the children's room. This was the one hundred and
thirty fifth Street branch of the library in Harlem during
the Harlem Renaissance, and soon the library was the center
of that cultural renaissance, or was a center of that
cultural renaissance. And I still haven't deep dive of the
Harlem Renaissance, and I'm not going to do it today,
but we've touched on a few times, like on our
episodes about Ben Fletcher, the black labor organizer from Philly. Also,
(14:28):
my great grandmother was like a white artist who knew
a lot of the people in that scene, especially where
it overlapped with like leftism more broadly, and so I
really want to learn more about it at some point,
but I didn't this time. Suffice it to say, Harlem
was the coolest shit place in the nineteen twenties where
black people did a ton of amazing cultural stuff, and
(14:48):
the library was part of it. It was intentionally part
of it, because librarians didn't start off as magically known
as a place where people could meet and do things
like they were seen as white places for white stuff,
until all these people at the one hundred and thirty
fifth Street branch changed that. They held talks by Langston
(15:10):
Hughes and a bunch of other folks, and one librarian
later wrote about this time quote, if you are familiar
with Harlem, you are aware of the fact that the
streets are frequently made impassable by the many soapbox speakers
and their enthusiastic audiences. It occurred to us that if
people will listen to politics and patent medicines, then they
will listen to education too, provided it as well presented
(15:33):
to them. So we employed one of the most eloquent
and most popular of these speakers and paid him to
address large crowds at strategic corners on the streets of Harlem.
Once a week. These people were urged to come to
a meeting at the library. Some two thousand people were
reached each week. If out of these fifty appeared at
the library, we were confident that something worthwhile had been accomplished,
(15:58):
and so they just yeah, got people to come to
the library. The other thing that I think is really
important to take away from that is from the very beginning,
soap boxing, which everyone understands is the podcasting of ye
oldie times, frequently mixed uh politics and patent medicines, which
brings us to the next segment of this show, the advertisers,
(16:28):
and we're back, and so yeah, this library developed the
division of Negro Literature History in Prince in nineteen twenty five.
Ernestine Rose also helped the first black woman get through
library school, a woman named Nella Larson, who worked for
a while at the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch,
but is much more famous for her place in literature
as a writer of American modernism. And it's like the
(16:49):
most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. And there are
biographies about her. And so I'm like, nope, too much
of a side character. Can't because one day probably topic
of her own.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
We love bonus episodes on our show, so you should
do bonus episodes with this. I'm just saying I do
two a week.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I mean I guess you do do five? Yeah, all right,
all right, fair.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Enough, You're doing great, keep going.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I am so impressed that you also still have time
to come on other people's shows. I am genuinely.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I'm honored for you and for Sophie anytime, all the time.
Oh thanks, Yes, I love this show. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah. The other thing that happened in nineteen twenty five
is that Poora Bell Prey enrolled in library school and
soon she's going to become the first Puerto Rican library
in New York City and probably the country. I really
liked the source I read that was like, yeah, we know,
she's the first Puerto Rican library in New York City,
and it's like in parentheses it's like which realistically probably
(17:52):
means the country, but they know they can't say it
because it's not. Because I really appreciate that verified because
like I everyone knows that listen sins to this. I'm
an enemy of any time anyone says the first person
who did something something because right, like you can't prove
it just anyway whatever my brain works in a very
specific way.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh no, I'm with you. Like when we talk about
first on anything, it's understanding that it has to do
with who's writing the history, where the history historical contexts
come from, and who's also claiming what. So it's always
asterisk because it also you might they just may not
be discovered. And that's okay, because that's some amazing things
when you get to discover new information.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Totally, and being the first isn't the only thing that matters,
you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I'm sure she was just excited to be able to
share her knowledge and her love and her passion.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, and she does it. She does this so much. Yeah,
she gets involved in writing folklore. She once said, quote,
one of my duties in the children's room was to
read the fairy tale shelves. Thus the folklore of the
world opened for me. As I shelved the books, I
searched for some of the folk tales I had heard home,
(19:01):
there wasn't even one. A sudden feeling of loss rose
within me. And so she's at library school and she's
this teacher, another libraryan folklorist, a white woman named Mary
gold Davis. So during that class she writes a children's
book called Peezzi Martina. This goes on to be published
in nineteen thirty two as the first Spanish language children's
(19:24):
book published by a mainstream press in the United States.
And it is a romance between a cockroach and a mouse.
And she is very clear this is not her story.
She heard this from her grandmother and it is a
Puerto Rican story. Like a lot of I've only been
able to track down some of her stuff, and it'll
specifically say like a Puerto Rican story rather than like
(19:45):
it'll have her name as the author. But instead of saying, like,
buy what about prey, it'll say, like a Puerto Rican story.
It's it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah. It's so interesting when you see people with the
love for their heritage, because we've seen it more and more,
thank goodness, with like the indigenous people bringing their own
folklore or like any kind of storytelling to life, and
they share it with people and they make sure to
write it because they we know with the colonization, we
(20:14):
know and all this stuff white people trying to erase history.
Part of raising that history is those lores and trying
to make them disappear or trying to make them evil.
We know all about that. So having people who take
the opportunity and time to write it down so that
they can share it and be preserved is such a
(20:34):
phenomenal thing to see and being able to see their
love for their heritage even like it just feels like
I'm being honored, Like I'm being privileged to see and
hear about their culture, and I love that aspect. Folklore
is so beautiful to me just because of that. When
I started learning more about like Korean folklores, I was like, what,
And you just feel this sense of connectedness to something
(20:55):
that you may not have like in so long or ever.
So that's something to two with, like, we should definitely
be honoring people like her, Yeah, who are preserving such
tales and traditions. I love that.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
No, that makes a lot of sense to me. And
it's interesting because I one of the things that I
end up I read a lot of like nineteenth century
folk tales, or rather nineteenth century writing down of folk tales,
and so a lot of the older ones, the first
ones in English are often written by these sort of
white interlopers or like white observers who are trying to
be good.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
It's like kind of all over the board. They're either like,
check out this wacky thing that they believe in Japan,
and other times they're like, I'm white and I've lived
in Japan for forty years and I've tried really hard
to do this right, you know. Yeah, and it's like
really interesting, but people actually writing from that culture, which
is what we see more now is you're more guaranteed
(21:49):
to get the like actual love of that culture instead
of like yeah, and it's funny too because you'll still
even see, like check out this weird thing the Ukrainians
believe over there in weird Land, you know, because the
Ukrainians weren't white in the Victorian mind, like, I mean whatever,
they weren't.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Right. It's complicated, but it's complication.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, But it's interesting they bring up this thing about
writing these stories down because it's when we talk about next.
Libraries had a problem. They were colonized as fuck right,
as like an institution, So the only real stories by
the library's mind are the ones that are written down.
So storytelling for Storytelling Hour had to come from a book.
(22:29):
Western libraries didn't understand the idea of oral literacy yet, right,
the idea that you can be aware of your culture
through oral traditions. Poor A Bell Pray broke that she
was the first person probably to appeal and win the
right to tell stories that had never been written down.
During storytime, Mary gold Davis, her teacher, told her, tell
(22:54):
your stories, but only tell the children that none of
these stories have been written down, but maybe someday they will.
It's like this like almost paternalistic, but it's still this
like love where like, yeah, this is an amazing but
one day they'll be real stories. But it's still like
it's still in the pretty genuine like poor actually has
very She thought very highly of the white women librarians
who sought her out and nurtured her career and helped
(23:15):
her break into this white dominated field. Right, So she
told the stories that eventually would find their way into
another one of her books, The Tiger and the Rabbit,
which was the first English language collection of Puerto Rican
folklore in the US. And she starts writing, and her
branch is doing amazing stuff in the black community. And
then in nineteen twenty nine, she transfers to one hundred
(23:37):
and fifteenth Street branch in a Puerto Rican community, and
it's here that she really hits her stride and starts
kicking ass as a librarian. As far as I can tell,
she pioneered Spanish language content in public libraries. I expect
she did it as part of a team of people
who are also amazing, right, But she worked her ass
(23:57):
off to get the community involved in the library. At
some point she watched a puppet show at her branch
and was like, oh, this is the shit puppets rule.
I'm sure that's how she said it. And so for
the rest of her life she worked with kids to
put on puppet shows because that was part of it,
was that by doing puppets you could bring the kids
into it, right. And she went around to churches, to
(24:19):
community centers, to neighborhood organizations and schools to put on
shows and like just do outreach into community. She did
bilingual shows regularly too, not just Spanish language shows, and
this just like hadn't been done. She put on events
for three Kings Day, a Puerto Rican holiday, and she
said this quote indirectly presented the library to this group
(24:43):
in a way that no other activity could have done.
Their confidence was gained. The library put on complete programs
in Spanish for children and for adults, and basically they
did at the one hundred and fifteenth branch what the one
hundred and thirty fifth branch did for the black community.
There's a downside to this, although I've read conflicting tales
of it, there's a problem if I actually look into
(25:04):
too many sources as they all start arguing with each other,
you know, right, Okay, so this isn't the librarian's fault,
but instead of racist city government's fault. Basically, these two
libraries served as quote ghettos where all black and Spanish
language content could be put, where all black and Latine
workers could be hired. So it was like, you try
(25:25):
and get hired as a black worker, and they'll be like, oh,
we'll go up to one hundred and thirty fifth and
they're like, that's not where I live, you know, and
they'd be like, oh, we already have a black library,
like we don't need another one. And so that's a problem.
And this limits their career advancement, right because you can
only work in this one place.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Right, instead of opening spots or making opening doors, They're like,
compete with each other. Here you go, good luck. And
this is because you need to fight this space. The
small amount of space is all we have for you.
But anyway, keep going.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yes, So in nineteen thirty nine, the Puerto Rican community
had moved a bit in the city, so she moved
once again to East one hundred and tenth Street and
kept up all the same stuff. Bilingual story hour reading
club's puppet theater, you name it. But you know what
they didn't have at these libraries ads because they were
(26:16):
tax funded instead of funded by private companies. But we,
on the other hand, are funded by private companies. And
that is just the compromises that everyone makes all the time,
like the following compromises. Here they are and we're back
(26:39):
in nineteen forty. She goes to the ala, the American
Library Association convention in Cincinnati, and while she's there, she
meets a musician and composer named Clarence Cameron White, who
is we're going to get to the first like potential
drama that I'm entirely inferring. The way that the story
is presented is that she meets him in the and
(27:00):
they get married a couple of years later, and everything's
happy and great. And I started writing it by reading
about him and being like, oh, he was recently widowed
or widowered or whatever, he recently lost his wife. The
complication she meets him in nineteen forty his wife doesn't
die until nineteen forty two, and they don't get married
till nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What happened, Oh, drama?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Probably they were just friends and then yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Were they Can they be friends? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean canon they Yeah, man and a woman doesn't
seem possible. But like a figure like this, every version
of her history is going to be a little bit sanitized.
I mean I found no scandal. Like, I'm not like
particularly worried that there's some like crazy skeleton in her closet.
But it's like when you're talking about like a children's
puppeteer person like, no one's like trying to write about
(27:50):
anything salacious, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Being the other woman, you know, her personality and the
everything about her reminds me of someone like my old
drama teacher, who are so passionate and so performed, Like
they perform and they love and they tell stories and
they understand the importance of puppetry, like and bringing in,
like acting out these different characters. I could only imagine
(28:15):
what kind of performances she gave in her storytelling, and
with that, what type of passion she has and just
like in her imagination being able to relay these stories
in a way that she was so successful enough to
be known to do this as well as writing these stories.
I just imagine she's just one of those people. No,
totally that you can't help but notice anyway. Yeah, and
(28:36):
then the effort she puts in telling these stories is
not telling a story, it is living that story for
the children or with the children. And I could only
imagine that's kind of how she also lived life.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I believe it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
So who knows, maybe some drama does happen, because when
you have that much passion, you know, Yeah, that makes
her interesting.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
No, I believe it. And it's it's interesting, right because
you're talking about someone who never had children and gets
married at forty, right, and.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So you're my type of a woman.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You're talking about someone who like either lived the like
cat lady life or lived a like pretty wildlife, you know,
and there's like.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
We exist to not have either of those things. Margaret,
how dare you true? You're with us? What are you
talking about?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
It's true, right, as an unmarried person in her forties,
no children, Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And also and the
reason that I mentioned, my great grandmother, who's like basically
living in New York around the same time as an artist,
also didn't get married until forty and then had like
one child I knew was and that's like wasn't normal
at all for someone living, you know, a woman living
(29:40):
in the early part of the twentieth century, right, So
she falls in love with Clarence White. You know, he's
got his own Wikipedia page as a composer and was
one of the most prominent violinists in the country. And
after they get married, Pura takes a leave of absence
from the library to follow him around tour for a bit,
(30:01):
and then she goes back to the library and then
she's like, you know what, I actually want to focus
on my writing, and so she just kind of wants
to be doing the art stuff and hell yeah, And
so she does that for a while. She writes. As
far as I can tell, she keeps up the storytelling
and the puppets during this time, but I'm not one
hundred percent certain, but it's like implied, and she writes
like eight books. Seventeen years into married life, her husband
(30:25):
dies of larynx cancer in nineteen sixty. She goes back
to the library to a new post one that I
think they might have made just for her, the Spanish
children specialist. And so at this point that whole thing
about like the Spanish language stuff only being at one
or two branches is not the case that was actually
some of the stuff that there seemed to be drama about.
(30:47):
Is like I read some people arguing that that sort
of gettoization was not as prominent as other people were claiming,
and that it was other issues keeping people from advancing,
and I read a lot of drama about employment discrimination
in the nineteen Thirtiesically, anyway, at this point, Spanish language
stuff all over wherever it's needed, and so she just
(31:08):
goes to every branch where it's needed and helps plan
events and helps bilingualize the New York City Public Library system,
which is, if that's all she had done, it would
have been amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Huge.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
If all she had done was write those children's stories,
it would have been amazing. If all she'd done was
be a puppeteer, would have been amazing. Then when she
was sixty five, she was forced to retire because all
city employees at the time were forced to retire at
sixty five. I don't know if that's still the case
or not. I actually wonder because at the top, I
was saying that there's like all these documents suggest she
(31:40):
was not born in nineteen oh three, but she told
people she was born in nineteen oh three. You know,
I wonder if it was so that she could keep
working a couple extra years smart, but I'm not sure,
you know, that's entirely my conjecture. She died in nineteen
eighty two, but her legacy continues to this day. Starting
in a Night eighteen ninety six, the American Library Organization gives
(32:02):
out an award in Belpre's name every year for children's
books by Latino authors. A librarian originally from the Dominican
Republic named Viannella Rivas told NPR in twenty sixteen, quote,
because of her, we have a story time in Spanish,
we have computer classes in Spanish, and I feel like
as a Latina librarian, we have a responsibility to continue
(32:24):
doing the work that she started. Shockingly, her books are
out of print right now, despite her being the earliest
known Afro Caribin American writer, despite there being an award
in her name. And yeah, there are still three more
librarians on that list of cool librarians that I was handed.
So expect to be returning to this subject. But I
(32:48):
wanted to read some of her stories on book club,
but I haven't found a PDF of it yet. The
Internet Archive had one, but they're hacked. Right now, I
found one really short story and so fuck it, I'm
going to read it to you all.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Now, do you have a puppet.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I'll pretend to have a putty.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, what the full experience?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
You all should act as though I have a really
amazing puppet.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's actually interesting that you talked about when you were
talking about folklore earlier, and we were talking about how
like indigenous folklore is perceived by others. Right, this story
is going to use the word Indian to describe the
people that's talking about, right, and it's gonna be describing
indigenous people. But the American North American conception of race
(33:32):
isn't necessarily going to apply one to one to in
a Puerto Rican context, and like so it's like interesting
because I can't say as cleanly how it relates to
indigenous culture. Right. Basically, that's my way of saying. If
the story had been written by a white person, I
would be suspect of it, but it was not, gotcha.
(33:54):
The legend of the Hummingbird from Puerto Rico by poor
a Bell prey between the towns of Kayi and Cidra
far up in the hills, there was once a small
pool fed by a waterfall that tumbled down the side
of the mountain. The pool was surrounded by pomorosa trees,
and the Indians used to call it Pamerosa Pool. It
was the favorite place of Alida, the daughter of an
(34:15):
Indian chief, a man of power and wealth among the
people of the hills. One day, when Alida had come
to the pool to rest after a long walk, a
young Indian came there to pick some fruit from the trees.
Alida was surprised for he was not of her tribe.
Yet he said he was no stranger to the pool.
This was where he had first seen Alida, and he
had often returned since then to pick the fruit. Hoping
(34:38):
to see her again, he told her about himself to
make her feel at home. He confessed with honesty and
frankness that he was a member of the dreaded Carab
tribe that had so often attacked the island of Barenkan.
As a young boy, he had been left behind after
one of those raids, and he had stayed on the
island ever since. Alida listened closely to his story and
(35:00):
the two became friends. They met again in the days
that followed and their friendship grew stronger. Alida admired the
young man's courage in living among his enemies. She learned
to call him by his Carab name, Taru, and he
called her Alida, just as her own people did. Before long,
their friendship had turned into love. Their meetings by the
pool were always brief. Alida was afraid their secret might
(35:23):
be discovered, and careful though she was. There came a
day when someone saw them and told her father. Alida
was forbidden to visit the Pomerosa Pool, and to put
an end to her romance with the stranger, her father
decided to marry her to a man of his own,
choosing preparations for the wedding started at once. Alida was
torn with grief, and one evening she cried out to
(35:46):
her god, Oh yuki U, help me kill me, or
do what you will with me, but do not let
me marry this man whom I do not love, and
the great God Yukiyu took pity on her and changed
her into a delicate red flower. Meanwhile, Taru, knowing nothing
of Alida's sorrow, still waited for her by the Pomerosa Pool.
(36:07):
Day after day. He waited. Sometimes he stayed there until
a mantle of stars was spread across the sky. One night,
the moon took pity on him. Taro. She called from
her place high above the stars, Oh, Taru, wait no
longer for Alida. Your secret was made known, and Alita
was to be married to a man of her father's choosing.
In her grief, she called to her god, Yukiyu. He
(36:29):
heard her plea for help and changed her into a
red flower. Ahi ahe cried, Taru, Oh Moon, what is
the name of the red flower? Only Yukau knows that.
The moon replied. Then Taro called out, O yuka U,
God of my Alida, help me too, help me to
find her. And just as the great God had heard
Alida's plea, he listened now to Taru and decided to
(36:53):
help him. There by the Pomerosa Pool, before the moon
and the silent stars, the Great God changed Taru into
a small, many colored bird, Fly Calibri, and find your
love among the flowers, he said. Off went the Calibri,
flying swiftly, and as he flew, his wings made a
sweet humming sound. In the morning, the Indians saw a
(37:16):
new bird darting around among the flowers, swift as an
arrow and brilliant as a jewel. They heard the humming
of its wings, and in amazement, they saw it hover
in the air over every blossom, kissing the petals of
the flowers with its long, slender bill. They liked the
new bird with the music in its wings, and they
called it humming bird. Ever since then, the little many
(37:39):
colored bird has hovered over every flower he finds, but
returns most often to the flowers that are red. He
is still looking, always looking for the one red flower
that will be his lost Alita. He has not found
her yet. That's the story.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
All these do remind me of the indigenous tales. And
the god you were talking about is a Tano god,
which is of the gods of the Puerto Rican indigenous peoples.
I have a failing if we were able to dig
more into her ancestral understand she is probably a part
of that indigenous group because that's from they're from her
(38:18):
area as well, like they are from that area. So
I absolutely believe these are tales from her her community. Yeah,
which is gorgeous, and I love that she was able
to preserve that and share that because that's what we
know when it comes to like indigenous and like especially
older religious groups. Is the is the stories of creation,
(38:39):
of love in creation. It is so beautiful and I
love that she preserved that so we could hear these stories, I.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Know, and I like, I want to find so many
more of them, and I guess I have to wait
for the Internet archive to be unhacked or I need to.
Like I found like some used versions of the books,
but they were like you know how Amazon.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Automout eBay level of like yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, like they're like price jacked up to two hundred
and fifty dollars or whatever, you know, right, and yeah, no,
I I I find it fascinating, and I find it
fascinating that they're out of print, and you know, I
I hope someone does something about that, but right, especially
because like, yeah, I love reading the earliest versions of
folk tales I can find, but usually that means reading
(39:25):
white interpretations of folk tales and so reading not that,
but the oldest that I can find is like for me,
the sweet Spot, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Right, and on top of that, someone who heard it
from an area that she knew, who was familiar with
that that was her home.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Like one of the best parts to this is learning
about indigenous people that I didn't know anything about. I
know nothing about yuko U and akabath God in itself
and which we love on our show. We love doing
like mythical goddesses and creatures and all of those, because
you know, there's so much power behind that, Yeah, and
the reason people believe in them. But not knowing that
obviously Puerto Rico, it makes sense to know there's an
(40:04):
indigenous group there, yeah, and community there that needs to
be preserved and their history should be preserved and deserved
to be preserved. Yeah, probably should be in power whatever whatnot.
But all of that to say is now, like you
brought this understanding through the talks of a library. I love.
I love the connectedness of.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It, I know, and I love that it's like the
work that she did about keeping this stuff alive. And
then like, obviously language is an important part of I
mean obviously Spanish is in the indigenous language, but compared
to English for an immigrant community, it's like really important
to have stuff specifically, Yeah, just like making the library
(40:43):
a space that's actually for the communities as part of
I just I was really impressed by her story and
I like, and it's a lot of stuff that I
take for granted, Like even the story about the origin
of libraries. I had just been like, right, oh, yeah,
of course a country has to a country has to
have roads, a country has to have like lending libraries.
Otherwise it's not really a country, is it. And it's like, well, actually, uh,
(41:05):
you know, we're pretty new to having them.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Like it's also a story about understanding how important that
history is and librarians are and what they bring to
a community as we're in one of the worst states
of for librarians and libraries and banned books, and a
reminder like like how important these stories are that so
many cannot understand because culturally we should be able to
(41:31):
learn about these things, and we people should know about
these groups of people who have always existed, existed before them,
you know, for us. So all of that is beautiful,
as well as the fact that you know, I love
things like the little libraries. You know that you see
the look at birthhouse looking yeah, libraries. But in order
(41:52):
to like kind of take back control from those who
are trying to ban books and trying to like make
libraries the enemies somehow, when stories like these are so
important and then people like her brought traditions and tell
folklore to life to children who didn't understand or maybe
for a long time, especially you know, you know, as
(42:15):
a person who immigrated to the US was taught to
learn what learned US culture and white culture essentially to
truly understand the country if you want to be a citizen,
instead of understanding that their culture was just as important
to the makeup of this area, specifically New Yorkers who
are from Puerto Rico and children who may have been
(42:37):
born in New York but their families are from Puerto
Rico and then being able to learn about their culture
and to appreciate their own culture. Like, wow, she did
so much in such an early time. Obviously, I'm very
excited you opened up this big box and I'm like,
oh my god, I love everything about this, including the libraries.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, no, totally. And it's just like I want to
fly on the wall. That stuff so bad, you know,
like and even it ties into what you're saying just now,
ties into how one of the problems with the early libraries,
including you know, some of the women's ones and the
free black ones and stuff, is they fell into this
idea that like this is for the improvement of people
by reading philosophy and stuff. And I'll read some philosophy
(43:18):
here and there. Right, I'm not I get it. I'm
I think that that stuff matters. But this idea that
fiction is distinct as this like lesser thing is something
that we're finally starting to break away from. And I
think part of the way that we break away from
it is exactly what you're talking about about. How these
stories and this idea of culture, like stories are how
(43:38):
you preserve culture in a lot of ways, and so
like stories matter, fiction matters just as much, you know. Yeah,
And I love I just think libraries are cool. I've
already spoken it too so far on this tour, and
like I can't wait to speak at more of them.
And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
One of my favorite things. Again, like I will continue
to go to the different cities or different places and
find libraries. When York and we went to the library immediately,
like we've explored everything. But thank you. I was going
to say one of the two things. One, I love
that story. I love being able to hear her writing
because it is it's exactly right, you know, when you
thirst for a cultural like folklore, that is exactly what
(44:18):
I would like to hear like that was perfectly done,
and you telling it was so perfectly like. Yeah, obviously
Margaret is a writer. She's definitely a storyteller. It is
like being able to.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Hear it through you.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Both of those were Shew's kiss. So thank you for
sharing with me.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Oh, thank you, well, thanks for coming on to my
episode about libraries. There's going to be more of them.
And yeah, if people want to hear more stories about
stuff that their mom never told them and then accidentally
ask really personal questions that you don't intend to ask,
where can they do that?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, we do talk a lot about our trauma as
in fact, I started Stuff Mom Never Told You by
talking about the METO movement and the trauma. So there
you go. But that stuff Mom Never Told You you
can listen to us wherever you listen to your podcast.
We have twelve.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Years worth of episodes, so if you want to go
listen to all the different hosts that's been there, historical context,
you want to hear our reactions to like different elections,
which is really still stings, you can.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Do that as well. We also have a book and
it's called Stuff Mom Never Told You. Actually at libraries.
We were able to find them at the Seattle Library
and a New York library. Cool Boston, No who. He
hadn't written the book yet, So if you want to
go check it out at the library, is there?
Speaker 6 (45:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
And if it's not, you should request it.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah. Please. Also, you can find me on McVeigh sam
Instagram for my doggy pictures.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
That is what Instagram is for as far as I'm
concerned exactly, Well, if you want to find me on tour,
you can look at my Instagram or my substack and
I'll be posting tour dates. And if you don't live
in the US, you can tell me that. You can
be like, why are you coming to where I live?
And then the answer is the aforementioned dog. And on
some level I'm aware that I could probably find someone
(46:05):
to watch my dog for long enough to go to
a different country, but why would I want to. I
like my dog more than I like you, dear listener,
And that's not even a slight against you. It's just
how much I like my dog. But that's unrelated. And
also I have a book out called The Sapling Cage,
just what I'm a tour about, and you should go
read it. Is fiction. I have a bunch of other
books too, including the most entertainingly titled is Escape from
(46:28):
Insil Island, So you can go read that if you want.
And you could also listen to Cooler Zone Media because
nothing would be funnier than watching me complain about ads
and then there's no ads and wouldn't that be funny?
And also you can listen to all the cool Zone
media podcasts that way, including an awful lot of shows
(46:48):
including Wait, there's one I really liked recently. Oh, there's
a really good it could happen here about the future
of coffee done by Prop who does hood politics with Prop,
and it is like one of the best encapsulations of
climate crisis and also how capitalism and extractive practices work,
and also how cooperativism. It was just like, I don't
(47:11):
even drink coffee. It's also super funny. Yeah, I've been
long holding that Prop is my favorite explained current events
person in my life.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
He starts off the episode by just singing a song
and total so you get past that part.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, that always throws me off. When host starts singing
or rapping, I'm like, what the what's happening? I'm never prepared. Yeah,
but he's like a professional rapper. Yeah, Like, oh, I'm
just good. It's still stocking though to see it live,
like if I'm on my Crsta body.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Love but stay for the stay for the vibes, Stay
for the vibes.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
And that's it. We're here at the end of the show.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
Cool People Who Did Stuff is a production of Cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit
our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (48:16):
Shout out to the team at Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff for putting this together, letting us run it,
having Samantha on.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, it's such a fantastic podcast, really great history of
revolutionaries who've done incredible things, and I love everything that
Margaret does. We need to have our back on the
show because she's actually written several books, so we should
definitely have her back off of her newsbook too, because it's,
from what I understand, really good.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yes, yes, we should. Well.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
In the meantime, listeners, if you would like to contact us,
you can You can email us a Stuffania mom Stuff
at ihartmedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at
stuff We Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We
have a tea public store, and we have a book
you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as
always to our super producer Christina, our excited producer Maya, and.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Our contributor Joey. Thank you and listeners.
Speaker 6 (49:08):
Thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You This
podcast from iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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