Description

Robert Lopezs grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez Puerto Rico in 1904 immigrating to the United States in the 1920s where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York Brooklyn until his death in 1987 The familys efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage culture and language within two generations

Little is known of Sixtohe may have been a longshoreman a painter or a boxer but was most likely a longshoremanor why he originally decided to leave Puerto Rico other than that he was a meticulously slow eater who played the standup keyboard and guitar and enjoyed watching baseball Through family recollection the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyns diverse tennis community as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from Sixtos remembered traits in Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present and reclaim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure