Dear friends:
It's been a little too long since my last post, a conversation with Luis, DACA Recipient, that brings light to the plight of Dreamers, young, undocumented individuals brought to the US as children.
If you missed it, here's Luis' granular and poignant story: “I am an American.”
'Sumercé'
Last week I noticed a weighty chunk of type bottom right on the front page of the New York Times. The headline: “Why Colombians May Greet You as ‘Your Mercy.’” * The piece described a fairly recent change in the way people address one another in Bogotá and central region just to the north. An honorific, 'sumercé' instead of the simple 'tu,' or more formal 'usted, o quizás 'seńora' has gained folk cool status.
Literally, 'su merced' means 'your mercy,' or 'your royalty.' It is a colonial relic that not long ago would denote class or servility. There is great class divide in Colombia. The deputy director of the Caro and Cuervo institute that studies Colombian Spanish suggests that the current popularity of 'sumercé' is precisely "a way to create a connection in a very fragmented society."
I sent a link to the story to a Colombian educator and friend who lives in Bogotá. "I am a real fan of the term 'sumercé,'" he shot back. "I agree that it has lost any hierarchical edge and today signifies respect but, especially, affection and care. If you had a similar term in English, you would have avoided all the hazards of the she/he issues. 'Sumercé' avoids any relationship with gender, age, or social position.
“If you want to express something with kindness and warmth, you simply say, ‘sumercé.’ Isn't that just great?"
This article is an oddball piece for the NYTimes, a kind of evergreen that the newspaper reserves to give us a break from the brutal news of the day. It is interesting to me because it broadcasts that issues of culture for the Spanish-speaking community—at least in the state of New York—are also integral to American life.
Here's the rapper Wikama Mc singing "Sumercé"
On my night table:
I just received my copy of The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez. It was published just last week and is being featured as an epic novel set against the construction of the Panama Canal. Cristina is also author of The Book of Unknown Americans, an earlier beauty of a book with nuanced, surprising characters living in an urban Delaware tenement.
Cristina is of Panamanian descent, though born in the United States. As she describes it, The Great Divide is the book she needed to write to discover herself. The Great Divide is traveling with me in a couple of days, and I will review it for you very soon.
I am halfway through a gorgeous book of poetry. Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez.
With poetry you don't want to rush a reading. It's a lush and gorgeous debut. I recommend it even to those who are reluctant to read poetry. It's more accessible than most, with a memoir thread that makes your heart race.
None other than Louise Gluck, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote that Elisa Gonzalez is a poet of "extraordinary force." These poems, she says, "make me feel as if poems have never before been written."
"One stingray, one swordfish, many, many dolphins! I saw giant starfish in the shallow waters of the beach."
My granddaughter and son traveled to Panama for Presidents' week without mother/sibling and wife—and without me.
After intimate time with tíos, tías, and primos, they headed to the province of Bocas del Toro just south of Costa Rica on the Atlantic, “It was a paradise.” They traveled by boat to several small islands—animals—beaches—vegetation. No restaurants, very few humans.
It's appropriate. The generations that follow me will make their own linkages with the place where I was born and raised. It's a gift they have by total serendipity and luck of our births.
* The reporter for the 'Sumercé' story in the NYTimes is Julie Turkewitz, Andes Bureau Chief, covering Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Perú. Turkewitz has been focused lately on immigration, crossing the Darien Gap twice, documenting the journey over the dangerous jungle on the formidable border between Colombia and Panama.
Would you use ‘sumercé’? I love hearing from you.
Glad I read this! Last week I bought a copy of The Great Divide to give you for your upcoming birthday. Looks like I'll have to go back to the drawing board! And maybe part of my gift can be to read The Great Divide myself and have a mother-son book club with you!
I’d use it for sure! Annoyingly auto correct keeps changing it! I loved the article Marlena.