Gibette

Gibette

Oral history from the Dominican Republic to Lawrence, Kansas.

Gibette’s family is from the Dominican Republic but moved to Puerto Rico just before she was born. She remembers feeling different from the other Puerto Rican children because of her cultural background and skin color. She moved to Colorado, Florida, and then back to Colorado again because of her father’s job. She came to Lawrence to study for her PhD.

Lawrence, Kansas

Gibette (G)

G: It's a little strange or a little complicated. My family is Dominican from the Dominican Republic. That is my mom and my dad and their mom and their dad and my uncles and everybody is from the Dominican Republic.

G: But my mom's sister married a Puerto Rican man at some point in her life. So she used her connections with this Puerto Rican man to get residency for all of her siblings. This was back when it was relatively easy to do that. In the 70s or something or 80s.

G: And so my mom had a green card, US Green Card while they were still living in the Dominican Republic. So my parents decided to move to Puerto Rico. And they still hadn't moved to Puerto Rico when I was born. But because they knew they were going to move to Puerto Rico, my mom had to…while she was pregnant, she had to go to Puerto Rico to stay with my sister who lived there for the last month of her pregnancy. And that's where I was born. I was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. I never lived there; not once.

G: I spent maybe the first month of my life there. And then I went to visit my friends for my cousin's wedding for like three days.

G: So technically, I am from my Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, but I have never been there for very long. So it's kind of weirdly identity confusing.

G: Anyways. So then my mom had me and she went back to the Dominican Republic because that's where they lived still. And I lived there for the first six or seven months of my life.

G: When I was a really tiny baby in the Dominican Republic, my mom says that somebody held me who was infected with an amoeba or something happened. Anyway, point is that I got so sick with an amoeba that I almost died as an infant. And then my mom had to go. She says she had to sneak into her neighbor's yard to steal milk from his goat so that she could feed me goat milk. And somehow that saved my life.

G: So that's pretty much my first and only experience in the Dominican Republic before I got better and then survived and we all moved to Puerto Rico.

G: So..Then, now we're in Puerto Rico. My family lived in Arecibo, which is in the northwest of the country, like right up at the coast. And I lived there until I was nine.

G: I guess I'm Puerto Rican, but in the Puerto Rico, we were known as the Dominican family. So we were already outsiders from the very beginning. They’re the Dominicans in Puerto Rico.

G: But then when we went to visit the Dominican Republic, we were like the little Puerto Rican cousins and we had weird accents and we didn't belong there either.

G: So yeah, I've never really not from the very beginning of my life, have I been in a place where I'm allowed to belong? So, yeah, that was Puerto Rico.

G: As you may be aware, Puerto Ricans are proportionally lighter skinned than Dominicans. There is a little bit of racism directed at Dominicans there. So it was kind of tough growing up there and having all that directed at you.

G: So I don't have hugely amazing memories of Puerto Rico in that sense, because I didn't really feel very welcomed there. But it is part of my identity in a lot of ways.

G: For instance, one time I was–Recently Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a song for the Hurricane Maria relief. And the song was everybody–He got a bunch of artists together and they were singing place names, like city names, from Puerto Rico.

G: And that was the story–the song. And it's very beautiful.

G: And I downloaded it because when you paid for it, you got to give money to Puerto Rico. And it was weird like hearing all the place names. It really brought something out at me like, Oh yes, this is, this is familiar, this is part of my story.

G: And also he put a sound in the song, which is this tiny little frog called a coquí, which only lives in Puerto Rico. It's the only place in the world where it lives. And it makes this little sound like “doo-doop, doo-doop” [high-pitched, two beats]: it's kind of a cute little whistle sound. And it only happens in Puerto Rico. So he put the sound in the song.

G: When I heard the song, I was like, “Oh my gosh, is the sound of my childhood. I know the sound. It's so familiar.”

G: For all of my life. I've thought of myself as a Puerto Rican person, but I'm sorry, as a Dominican person and then people tell me, Oh, but you're born in Puerto Rico? You’re Puerto Rican. And then I get mad. But now in my old age, I think to myself like, Oh, there is a part of me that is Puerto Rican in some way. So yeah, that was growing up when I was very little.

G: And then when I was nine, my parents were doing pretty well financially. My dad was the general manager of Encyclopedia Britannica in Puerto Rico. And this was in 1997. And already the Encyclopedia is, we're starting to get, what's the word threatened by the Internet?

G: Because like one, not the internet. Like they started making encyclopedias available on CD ROM, which were a lot less profitable. So already like things were starting to take a downturn. So my dad saw the writing on the wall and he was like, Oh, we can't stay here, even though we were doing really well there. It wasn't gonna be sustainable for a much longer.

G: So he decided to move us all to the US. As general manager–he was overseeing all of the Puerto Rican branches–so he had to travel a lot throughout Europe and throughout the United States. So he saw a lot of different places as he traveled. And the place he liked the most was Colorado for some reason.

G: I think part of it is he didn't want to be among too many Dominicans. I guess. You want it to be like immersed in whiteness perhaps. Because he emphatically did not want to move to Florida, which is where other Caribbean people go, or to New York, where it's where all the Dominicans go.

G: So we ended up in Colorado, which was super random. There are no Dominicans and in Colorado, maybe like five, and most of that is my family.

G: Yeah. It was really strange because I don't know if other Latin American parents are like this with their kids. But at least with my parents, they never really brought us into their decision-making as children. We just went along for the ride.

G: So one morning my sister told me we're moving to the United States in two weeks. And I was like, You lie, like that can't be happening. Surely there will be some sort of warning or some kind of preparation.

G: But it turned out that, yeah, we were moving to the US and two which was insane. It was the most horrible thing ever. I had all my friends and everything [in the Dominican Republic]. Yeah.

G: I remember that morning when she told me she was like How old was she? She was 12. She was at that age where everything is really melodramatic. So she's looking out at the sunset and she's like, “This is one of our few last sunsets in Puerto Rico”. She said something like that and I thought she was a goddess because she was my older sister. And I was like, yeah, Our last sunset. It was a very sort of pseudo philosophical moment.

G: But yeah, so, yeah, with very little warning, we move to the United States. To Denver, Colorado. We arrived at the beginning of October in 1997. And back in those days before global warming, October was a really cold month in Colorado.

G: So yeah, when we arrived it was pretty cold. I don't know if it was like cold-cold, but it was definitely cold. The coldest I had ever been in my entire life because Puerto Rico is tropical, Dominican Republic is tropical. I had never ever been cold. And also, we came in with little windbreakers because you can't find jackets in Puerto Rico.

G: So we arrive by the time we get our bags and everything, it's like two in the morning. So he stepped out of DIA; it's two in the morning. It's freezing cold. We are not prepared for the cold. I literally thought this was death. It had to be death. There's no way in a living person could exist like this. So yeah.

G: It was the craziest experience.

G: Yeah, We got our little rental car and we did not know anyone in Colorado, I think in retrospect. Well, I am certain My father is insane because why why would you move to a place? You didn't know a single person.

G: But yeah, we got our little rental car and we set out into the world. And for me and my sisters, we were kids. It was exciting. It was kinda fun like doing this whole new thing with no–with no plan and no safety net. But now in retrospect, I just–I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been for my parents.

G: Like I have immigrated to a new country now as an adult. And this is me with no kids and a whole lot of preparation. And even then it's terrifying, so I can't imagine what it must have felt like for them.

G: So yeah, that evening we set out. We were exhausted because the flight had taken ages. Then we–we [laughing softly] needed to find a place to sleep. So we're driving along. We don't know anything about where Anywhere is.

G: We end up at a strip of motels along a street called Coalfax. And one of them is called Family Motel. So we're like, yeah, that's the place for us. We are a family and we need a motel. So my dad got us a room and it was a huge king bed. And we all sort of laid down on the bed without even taking your clothes off because we were so exhausted and we slept there for the night.

G: Many years now, many years later, quite soon after we came to find out that that strip of motels is quite predictably a very seedy street with motels. That street, Colfax is where the “ladies of the evening” go to do their business.

G: So yeah, it was a bad choice in retrospect. But at the time it seemed like a good idea.

G: I don't know why it was called Family Motel–maybe to make it seem a little more respectable what they were doing. But yeah, so we ended up–I think that's a testament to how ill-prepared my parents were to live life in the United States.

G: Yeah. But when my dad had come here, he knew that there was a certain school district called the Cherry Creek School District, which was the best school district in Denver. He wanted to get us an apartment in that area. So the next day we set out and looked around at apartments and found an apartment.

G: And obviously we didn't have any like, food or things to cook with. Yet. On that first day, my dad was like, oh, after we get the apartment and after we figure everything out, we're gonna go to a restaurant and we're so excited. They were like, Oh, we're gonna pick a restaurant. And we found this restaurant called Souper Salad, which was a buffet. And we're like, Oh buffet, this should be delicious.

G: Now we step in and it's actually a buffet of like cold American salads, like macaroni salad and potato salad and spaghetti salad. Everything was cold. Then there was soup. And it was just the most disgusting thing ever.

G: We had never had salads like that. We were just traumatized at how growth everything was, and it was a buffet. So it was like, oh, yeah, you can have as much as you want except we didn't want any of it.

G: It was so traumatizing to be thrown into Midwestern cooking at the deep end.

G: So yeah, it was a very weird day.

G: But then we ended up with a–with a apartment and then we…The school was down the street from our apartment, so it was well-chosen.

G: My dad spoke a fair amount of English because he had studied it in school and he was a real smarty pants, so he was pretty good at it. But my mom spoke no English and we girls spoke the amount of English that you learn in school. So they sort of muddled through getting us enrolled in school and everything.

G: Then…Let's see. Oh, yeah. I remember our apartment was on the corner of Iliff and Peoria and they made us memorize that “I Iliff and Peoria. Iliff and Peoria.” Just in case we ever got lost. We were–we were supposed to tell people, “Oh, I live on Iliff and Peoria.” Yeah.

G: We were right down the street from the school and the school had this really big sign with–it had the temperature on it every day. So my dad did this thing where he would step outside and he'd like feel the air for a second and then he thought “ummmm it's 65 degrees today” and we didn't know how he knew. And then much later we found out that he could see the sign that had the temperature on it. So yeah, he tricked us. Any who…

G: Yeah, my dad would teach us English in the evenings when we came home from school, he would get his little whiteboard and Teach us like conversational phrases. I still remember he taught us the phrase, by the way, as a way to change the topic. Oh, by the way, I think that's the only phrase that I remember specifically from what he taught us. Yeah.

G: I don't quite remember how we learned English. We just learned how it is with kids.

G: But I do remember, oh my gosh, this was so exciting. So when I arrived, I was in the fifth grade and I was in a regular fifth grade classroom. Everyone was like sort of weirdly fascinated with me for the first couple of days. And then they got bored of me. I couldn't talk to anyone. I couldn't speak English.

G: But sometimes I would go to the ESL classroom, which was amazing. It had a whole wall of books. It was just so many books all in one place. I was obsessed with it immediately. So when I would go to the ESL classroom, I found all of the books that were in Spanish. I read them all. And then I read them all again. And then I ran out of books and Spanish. So I was forced to read the books in English because what else am I gonna do? I started reading all the books in English just because I had to. And that's really how I just started learning because I was forced to read books in English. So that was my ESL classroom.

G: And I remember one day, me and my little sister were both in elementary school, she was in the third grade and my ESL teacher took me aside. And she was like, Oh, I need to talk to you about your sister. She likes to–she likes to “exa-juh-rar”. And I was like “exa-jih-rar?” and she's like Yeah, yeah, yeah. “exagerar”. And I'm like, What are you saying? So she pointed to the word in the dictionary and I was like, Oh, she [my sister] “exagera”. Oh, I get it. So yeah, there was a bit of a language barrier there. But yeah, we learned pretty soon. And then let's see what happened after.

G: So then my dad started a business in the Dominican Republic because he really wanted to have done really well in business before he wanted to strike big again. He never succeeded. But any who–because he was doing businesses and the Dominican Republic a year after living in Colorado, he decided to move us to Florida so that he could travel more easily.

G: And once again, they gave us no warning about this. So tell me why on a Friday afternoon–on a Friday morning, I get to school. And my all my students…all my teachers are like, “, I'm so sorry that you're moving and I'm like, I'm not moving” and they're like, “Well, your mom came and gave us your textbook. She said that you're moving.” And I was like, no, that's not happening. Give me my textbook, I need my books. So all day long, I was getting my textbooks back from my teachers. Then when I get to the car at the end of the day, my mom's like, why do you have those textbooks? I returned them and I was like, Why? She said we're moving today. I'm like what?...Anyway, it was a crazy time.

G: We moved to Florida for a year and then my dad's business failed. And then we move back to Colorado where our hearts belongs because we had really come to fall in love with it in that time. So yeah, that's where I grew up in Colorado.

G: What's funny is, by the time I came back from Florida, I had read so many books that I was like, insanely good at English in a very short amount of time. So when they tested me to place me in a class back in Colorado, they–the placement was advanced English and they were like, No, surely that can't be; she learned English two years ago.

G: They put me in remedial English for no reason.

G: I had to take remedial English in seventh grade for no reason just because they thought I couldn't speak English.

G: It was quite unfair.

G: Then. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Oh, and then grew up and all this stuff.

G: So I did my undergrad in Washington State, which is in the Pacific Northwest, it is quite different from the Midwest.

G: Quite different in ways that I was not prepared for.

G: People are very friendly, very kind, but very not friendly. Like they're nice to you, but then they don't like reach out, they're not warm. Yeah.

G: And then I did my master's in Michigan, which is very Midwest.

G: I've lived most of my life in the US, in the Midwest. And then when I went to do my doctorate, I applied to a lot of different places and I got accepted to the University of Kansas.

G: I was really excited about going–getting to a doctorate. But people in Colorado are not super kind about Kansas because of state rivalries, I guess. So I would tell people like, “Hey, I'm going to get a doctorate” and they're like,”Oh, that's amazing. Where?” [I was like] “in Kansas.” Then they were like “Oh…”

G: But actually I'm so glad I ended up at the University of Kansas. It was so amazing. My first summer that I lived there, I got a fellowship for applied humanities to do some local history research at the Lawrence Public Library.

G: So I did a ton of research into the early history of Kansas and Lawrence. And it was fascinating. It's such a really–it is such a cool history.

G: Just, you know, all the Civil War conflicts and all of the founders and everything. So doing that history project really helped me feel like this town is kind of like it reflects who I am a little bit. This sort of like a place that was–that didn't belong, where it belongs. And that everyone was kind of attacking and saying that you shouldn't be here. But they were like, You know what, we're gonna be here anyway. And they were kind of like bookish and nerdy and they didn't know what they were getting into. I felt like, yeah, that's that tracks. That's pretty much what I mean, what I'm about.

G: So yeah, I lived in Kansas for five years and I'm really, really good in it, at least in Lawrence. It was a really beautiful place.

G: And now I moved to South Korea because I wanted to.

G: It's only now that I'm immigrating as an adult that I realized, wow, that must have been so hard for my parents to do.

G: Like immigrating is no joke. It's like everything that used to define you as an adult and a human no longer exists. And you're like, oh my, like, who am I? What is my role in society? What is my value to society?

G: And one thing that my parents really, really made us do was–what's the word–mix with American society and learn really good English and just really not necessarily assimilate because they were always very proud of our Dominican culture. But, you know, mingle, mingle with Americans.

G: And they always kinda low-key made fun of people who stayed in Spanish communities and never learned English. They were like, Oh, that's so so-and-so.

G: But now that I'm living in Korea, like it is terrifying being in a country where they don't speak your language and you have to do like legal things and official things in a language that you don't understand.

G: Like, I don't know what I'm getting myself into. I could be signing away my life without knowing it. Of course, I need this translated.

G: So now I super understand why people stay in those communities and why people need these resources because yes, yes, they need them.

G: Alright, so one thing that was difficult when we moved to the US was that, like I said, we were Dominicans in Colorado. And in Colorado, they only Latin–Latinx people are Mexicans Really, or Central American people, mostly Mexican people.

G: So it is true what they say that it's hard for Latinx people to build a sense of solidarity right away. When we arrived to [sic] the US, we were Dominican among Mexicans. We did not belong together. They were different. So it was really hard to get a sense of community with the Latinx people who are there.

G: For instance, there was a Mexican church, but my dad, sorry Hispanic church, but my dad never wanted us to go there because oh, they're Mexican.

G: So yeah, it was strange to find a community of people, especially because we look the way we look like Dominicans look like they're mixed with black and white. So in school people would ask me, “Oh, you're mixed.” And I'm like, “Oh, well, yes-no. I'm kind of mixed, but I'm Dominican, I'm Hispanic.” And they're like, “Oh, you don't look Mexican.” And I'm like, “I'm not Mexican, it's a different thing.”

G: So it's really, really hard to define myself for a long time.

G: People would ask me like, “Where are you from?” And I would want to say the Dominican Republic. But first of all, that takes forever to say; second, many people thought I was saying the Banana Republic, which is a store and not a country. And also yeah, it just people weren’t understanding what it was that I'm saying.

G: So a lot of times I just said Puerto Rico because it was easier and people knew what it was. So many times I'd be like, yeah, I'm Puerto Rican or I'm from Puerto Rico.

G: So for a long time I sort of alternated back and forth like I'm Dominican or for Rican and a no. And also like, I had just moved from Puerto Rico.

G: So it did feel like then many, many years passed and we kept going back to the Dominican Republic and visiting family and everything. So my connection with the Dominican Republic was maintained, whereas my connection with Puerto Rico was kind of lost.

G: So I started consistently calling myself Dominican. And I remember one time somebody was like, “Oh yeah, I know someone from the Dominican Republic or maybe Nicaragua. One of the two.” And I'm like, “Yeah, it's not the same thing at all, but okay; thank you for trying.”

G: Yeah. It was strange to find an identity.

Marta Caminero-Santangelo

Gibette

English

Video

Dominican Republic