{"id":54293,"date":"2017-06-27T00:27:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T00:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54293"},"modified":"2017-06-27T00:38:23","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T00:38:23","slug":"a-family-comes-out-of-the-racial-closet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54293","title":{"rendered":"A Family Comes Out of the (Racial) Closet"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Family Comes Out of the (Racial) Closet<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Takeaway<\/a>
\nWNYC<\/a>
\n2017-06-13<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nAlison Forn\u00e9s<\/a> with her daughter Amiya Forn\u00e9s-Sicam (left) and mother Julia Forn\u00e9s (right). (Alison Fornes)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Alison Forn\u00e9s<\/a>,\u00a0an education consultant based in Salem, Massachusetts<\/a>, wrote to us wanting to speak with her mother, Julia, as part our “Uncomfortable Truths”<\/a>\u00a0series.<\/p>\n

Talking to your mom about identity\u00a0may not seem like a conversation most people would classify as “uncomfortable,” but Julia largely kept the story of her upbringing from her daughter. In 1956, at just six years old, Julia was sent from Puerto Rico<\/a> to an orphanage in Connecticut<\/a>. Because of racial tensions in the area in 1956, Julia was discouraged from carrying on her traditions from back home in\u00a0order to be viewed as a more desirable adoptee for a family. She spent much of her life trying to pass as anything but Puerto Rican.<\/p>\n

As Alison got older, she started to wonder why she didn’t know more about her mother’s childhood traditions back in the Caribbean<\/a>. So she sat down to ask\u00a0Julia about why she felt compelled to hide her Puerto Rican identity, and how she eventually came to embrace it.<\/p>\n

Listen to the story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alison Forn\u00e9s,\u00a0an education consultant based in Salem, Massachusetts, wrote to us wanting to speak with her mother, Julia, as part our “Uncomfortable Truths”\u00a0series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2850,414,14646,8,6462,20],"tags":[27156,27157,17201,7523],"class_list":["post-54293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-family","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-alison-fornes","tag-julia-fornes","tag-the-takeaway","tag-wnyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54295,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54293\/revisions\/54295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}