1/12/2024 0 Comments Rita moreno marlon brando young![]() It is peculiar to me that Rita never mentions her brother. ![]() Her father's relatives would tend to disagree (read on). She remembers her father as cruel and unfaithful. However, her interpretation of family events as far as her biological parents are concerned explains why in 1952, while Rita was in a show at Teatro Puerto Rico in New York, her biological father and my grandmother, her father's cousin, tried to see her backstage, and she refused to meet with them, claiming that man was no relative of hers. Gloom was everywhere for young Rita, understandably so: limited quarters, financial woes, racism, weather inclemency. Her family expanded or contracted, apparently, to the extent that her mother's male companions came in or walked out of their lives. Rita could not have titled her book "My Beloved World." I do believe it was because she had nothing but anguish and penury, nothing to alleviate her vital distress or provide a different perspective, no family to relate to other than her aunt Yuya, with whom Rita's mother and Rita lived in a cramped tenement in the Barrio. Instead she celebrates the joy of cultural traditions and the tight network of family relationships that made her life unique. Yet Sotomayor never dwells on the precariousness of her family's life: she mentions it all casually and takes it as something else that was simply a part of life. Regardless of the lack of truthfulness or abundance of fancy in this new volume, I could not help but compare Rita's recollection of New York and her childhood in the city to Sonia Sotomayor's "My Beloved World." Both lived in poverty in tenements or projects, both struggled and rose to prominence in their own fields. Here she finally mentions the town, but in the first three pages I was again surprised by Rita's version of her family situation during her early childhood. ![]() Maybe that is what she thought was a rain forest. There was a picturesque bamboo grove on the other side of a tall cement wall that separated the Valenciano River from Barriada Manchurria, a slum in the outskirts of the town where she lived and where some of her father's cousins also lived still in the `60s. I must confess I was ready for more of that fantasy and wanted to know whether she indulged in more of that nonsense in this new book: she was born in a hospital in Humacao, which elsewhere she unfairly describes as a small town (it was not), but until the age of five lived in Juncos, Puerto Rico, nowhere near any rain forest even in Humacao the rain forest cannot even be seen from any backyard. In a previous biography ("Rita Moreno: Hispanics of Achievement," by Susan Suntree, 1992) Rita Moreno recalled her childhood in Puerto Rico as spent at the foot of the rain forest in Humacao, Puerto Rico. It's her initial telling of her very young life that I have a lot of trouble with. ![]() Her account of life in Hollywood and her own family life as an adult is both touching and insiring. Her scars, however, are visible, and she makes sure we know how they were inflicted and where they are. Her life has been full of turmoil and disappointment, but she has survived and thrived. She is lively, incredibly talented and a relentless fighter. Anything Rita Moreno says and everywhere she appears, she immediately captures our attention. ![]()
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