For the kickoff of Cuentos visibles y cenas escondidas | Signs and Wonders and Hidden Dinners, we (with some unexpected help from the Executive Director of YMCA Achievers) transformed a fluorescent-lighted classroom in the Egleston Square YMCA Achievers building into your favorite tía’s lamp-lit, gauze-curtained living room.
Luis Cotto and I had sat down a couple of weeks earlier and made a short list of people to invite who had history with the neighborhood. The idea was to share with them plans for the Bodega Signs + Wonders project and invite people to share stories and ideas. I made invitations and visited each person to talk to them a bit about the project and invite them to dinner.
Many of them were busy with their families and small businesses and the holiday season. About half of those we invited came and stayed despite the rain and the weeknight and the undercooked rice. Names aren’t included here for now, just for privacy and permission’s sake, but in attendance was a neighbor who grew up in Egleston and caters healthy versions of Dominican food; a neighbor who works as a membership coordinator for the YMCA and lives upstairs from a corner bodega, where her husband works; her teenaged daughter; the owner of of Egleston’s Latino Beauty Salon; and a seriously longtime Egleston Square resident and former organizer of Boston’s Puerto Rican festival.
I fumbled the memory timeline activity I’d planned—a consequence of 3 hours of slightly panicky cooking and a towed car just before the event. Still, people shared generously and spontaneously, personal stories about work and life and loss and what JP was like in the 70s. One person talked about what it was like to reinvent herself after getting laid off from her job a month after September 11—8 months pregnant. A neighbor she’d just met, now retired, encouraged her to accept job promotions she was offered, remembering struggles from his own career.
We ate and talked some more. Frank Baez introduced himself to the group via recorded video from Peru, where he was part of a literary festival. We shared plans and ideas for the project and people asked a lot of questions. One neighbor was enthusiastic about an idea to have an Egleston Square/JP Memory Party Bus, insisting we needed a double-decker tour bus instead.
Everyone seems excited about what’s to come! Our next project event will be a writing workshop on Saturday, January 27, 6:30-7:45pm at the Egleston Square Branch Library. Stay tuned for details!










