Bad Puerto Rican is a multidisciplinary project that explores my family’s history as Puerto Rican Americans of Spanish descent in tandem with the historical relationship between the US and Puerto Rico. Predicated on my grandfather’s memoirs, which he recorded before he passed away and which I am transcribing for him, this work includes family history, cultural and social influence, politicization, and personal desires that are both at odds and overlapping. This work reflects the anxiety and humor of my own heritage as a white Latina, a descendant of both colonizers and the colonized. It also mirrors the anxieties of so many Puerto Rican experiences and brings into focus the realities of first- and second-generation Puerto Rican Americans. My hope is that the final product of this research is a visual and written excavation of personal history combined with fictional/mythological world building and social/political history that creates an experiential and bodily illustration of the complexities of the migrant/colonizer/colonized experience.
Studies for Bad Puerto Rican
Los Caldas del Sur - Most images courtesy Haylee Anne
