Last night I went to see the play A Puerto Rican Story which looks at the Puerto Rican Experience here in Chicago. The play is an adaptation of the documentary Chicago's Puerto Rican Story which aired on PBS.
For me, the play highlighted how all of history both personal and local and global are circles which keep coming around again. Before PR was my island, before Lin-Manuel and his family became my family too, even before Hamilton, when I first came to Chicago as part of a volunteer year I lived in Humbolt Park.
When I came here Chicago was new and big and shiny compared to where I had been for the past 2 years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I kept being excited to learn there were parks and museums and stories opened past 5 and I did not have a good grasp of how big Chicago was. So I went to museums and the loop and work in Oak Park and did not take much time to learn about the neighborhood I was living in. It was not my neighborhood just where I was staying. And I did not know that Chicago would become my permanent home.
I only started to really explore and feel comfortable exploring Humboldt park several years after I moved to another area of Chicago. I have now been to festivals there as well as The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture and wonder how I was so self-focused, and so distracted by Chicago as a whole that I missed the rich history of Humboldt Park.
What is the history of the neighborhood, or town or village or city where you live? What are the celebrations and what are the tragedies? Good things to think about when you have a spare moment.
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