Written by Kiara Ventura
I was not aware of my true identity until I read The Bird of Paradise by Raquel Cepeda. Using profane vocabulary and her sassy personality, Cepeda pulled me right into my culture. She tells the story of discovering her roots and reveals the aspects of her life that make her who she is emotionally, spiritually, historically and culturally. She takes readers from the Taino Indians making a new home in mountains of Dominican Republic, to the journey she took to find her inner cultural soul, to an eye-opening visit to the land of Morocco. Throughout her journey, Raquel examines how all this is intertwined and expressed in her identity beyond the biological revelations provided by a simple DNA sample.
She begins her memoir with the struggles she experienced as a child. When she moved to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, she experienced culture shock because she noticed how people in America were judged and labeled because of their race and status. She had a distant relationship with her mother because her mother had children with men who always seemed to a take advantage of and abuse her; something Cepeda despised. Although she lived with her father for most of her childhood, she also despised the relationship she had with him because he always seemed to deny his Dominican identity and pushed Cepeda to do so too. He forced her to practice tennis as a child and treated her very poorly. It seemed like the only escape and identity Raquel Cepeda could find for herself was in music-hip hop music. She then began to immerse herself in 80`s hip hop music and culture. She became fascinated by break-dancing competitions and how the “skin” of New York City’s subway cars became tattooed with graffiti.
However, once she became an adult and found out that her father had a heart disease, Raquel felt galvanized into a search for their mutual roots since his time might be running out. By this time, Raquel already had a child and was a successful journalist. While describing her journey of discovering her DNA ancestry, she also tells the story of mending her relationship with her father; the history of Latino; and breaking barriers of race. Cepeda deliberately wrote her memoir in a way that Hispanics would have a lot of ‘I can relate to that!’ moments. She even appeals specifically to the Hispanic community by writing in Spanglish sometimes. But in the end I realize that The Bird Of Paradise can appeal to anyone from any part of the world, since the history of human migration teaches us that everyone is potentially descended from a combination of different races and cultures.
Once I believed that I was only “Dominican,” even though many people would not guess what I am on their first try. When I celebrated Eid with my best friend while dressed in Bengali clothing, her family members spoke to me in their native language as if I shared their ethnicity. When I was on the train last week, a woman with gray hair falling down her face told me I look European or Greek. Every time I encountered such situations, I’d usually reply “No, I`m just Dominican.” However, Raquel Cepeda convinced me to believe otherwise. Being Dominican, does not imply only one distinct root of identity. We are historically composed of diverse ethnic backgrounds and ancestors who have created families which unite multiple cultures. This does not only apply to the Dominican culture, but to the world as a whole. I have come to the ultimate conclusion that we are all related in some way down our ancestral line. Whether we want to separate ourselves into distinct races, statuses, cultures, skin-colors or not, we are all the same color in the inside–pink. Reading The Bird of Paradise has led me to realize that our DNA lines are all intertwined pointing to one beautiful point of origin, called Earth.