Introduction

Gold Medal Winner, Autobiography/Memoir, 2015 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.
Rita is an infant when her father leaves a successful career in the US to live in “paradise”?a seaside village in the Dominican Republic. The Coconut Latitudes is her haunting, lyrical memoir of surviving a reality far from the envisioned Eden?and of the terrible cost of keeping secrets.

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Excerpt

Introduction

Before I am born, my father, for reasons shrouded in mystery, abruptly leaves a successful engineering career in the United States. He buys two hundred and fifty acres of remote beachfront land on Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. This small, Spanish-speaking nation occupies two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola and is ruled by the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Haiti occupies the rest of the landmass. Trade winds blow year-round all the way from the deserts in Africa, combing through palm groves and shaping the trunks into inverted commas. The island is also in the main path of hurricanes that storm through the Atlantic and Caribbean from June through November. In 1946, when I am six weeks old and my sister Berta is four, my father moves us into this instability. Our family lands—with a pile of suitcases, a box of books, and bright Fiesta dinnerware—years before there will be electric power or actual roads to Miches, the closest village.

At this time, access to our property is a four-hour boat trip from another town, or a daylong horseback ride over the Cordillera Oriental range. These mountains, my father says, will protect our land from the worst hurricanes. He hires a crew to plant ten thousand coconut seedlings and names the property Cocoloco Plantation. My father frequently says we are a damn happy family; we’ve arrived in paradise, and are the luckiest people in the world.

Chapter 1: Miches

It’s a sticky summer day when we first bounce over the mountain in a ratty jeep driven by an old man with brown leather skin. The windshield is cracked and dust covers everything. Our suitcases are piled on top, strapped down by frayed ropes. We’re not tied down by anything at all. We heave left and right as the jeep straddles the track that’s barely a road. I’m used to these raggedy roads in the Dominican Republic—riding in a vehicle is always clattery and bumpy on this island.

Daddy sits up front with the driver, and in the smelly backseat, Mama wedges in between my sister Berta and me, trying to hold on to us as we lurch up yet another switchback. Berta turns white, leans out the window, and throws up. Daddy mumbles something about how since she’s nine, she should be used to this by now and not get sick. The vehicle stops and I get sick too. Daddy tries to distract us by showing us a waterfall off in the distance, but all I can see is the mess I’ve made of my clothes. We pile in again and rumble onward, slowing down behind a donkey cart piled high with bananas. When we crest the mountain, we stop where the air is cool. There’s nothing left in our stomachs. The driver goes off in the bushes to pee, and Daddy climbs a rocky ledge. He waves his arms, motioning us to join him.

The hillsides spill all the way down to the bluest water I’ve ever seen, a bay of shimmering light so bright it makes me blink. Daddy smiles. “See—there’s Miches town.” He gestures toward the inner curve of the bay to a scattering of small buildings crouched along a rocky shoreline with a few streets spreading out like a broken spider web. I blink and imagine the little houses are insects trapped in the web and then I shudder and tell myself not to think like that. I squint again at a long snaky river at the edge of town and then, to the right of it, a long sweep of sandy beach that stretches out like a sliver of new moon. The beach sweeps out to a point of land and disappears on the other side in a white-gold haze. The shore is lined with green fringe, and a smaller patch of a light color stands out like a ragged square of carpet. Daddy waves his arm toward the pale green at the far end of the bay.

“There,” he says as tears roll down his face. “That’s Cocoloco Plantation. We’ll always be able to pick it out from here.”

“How come?” Berta asks.

“Because my plantings are young palms—all the other plantations have been here for decades and the fronds get dark green with age. So Cocoloco will always stand out.”

The driver peers over the rocks to see what we’re all looking at. He smiles and I can see he’s missing most of his front teeth. “Bonito, sí.” He nods. Pretty. Daddy lets me go and jumps back to the road.

I’m left alone up on the rock and it’s dizzying way up here. This island is all I’ve known. We’ve moved several times before, but this is going to be, as Mama says, permanent. Forever, whatever that means. I’m lightheaded and whimper when I look down the edge of the cliff. Daddy glares at me as if I shouldn’t be afraid and pulls me down to the ground without a word. I figure he thinks I should just be able to jump down off the rock like it’s nothing. We pack ourselves back into the car and the bay gets closer as we shudder downward.

We pull into the village of Miches, passing a church and small plaza. In a few minutes the jeep sputters to a stop next to a pasture. A bunch of cows amble up to a sagging barbed wire fence, swishing their tails. Daddy has bought a small lot at the edge of town, far away from the nearest house. The property fronts the bay and is bordered on one side by a laguna that used to drain out to the ocean but is now sealed up into a pond that keeps stray animals from entering our yard.

The village is mostly farmers, fishermen, and trades people. The public guagua bus rattles its way over the mountain three times a week. It weaves through town, picking up passengers, passing the butcher shop over by the river, the tiny post office, the police station with its two officers and a three-legged dog, a clínica with a part-time doctor, and two grocery stores.

Instead of a nice concrete home with tile floors and rooms for servants—like other plantation owners in bigger towns build—our home will be small, with no servants, and it will be made entirely of aluminum. A neighbor sniffs and rolls his eyes. “Aluminio?” Daddy assures the doubters it will be as solid as concrete, and hurricane-proof.

While we wait for the house sections to arrive, we rent a cottage owned by someone from the capital who only visits Miches a few times a year. Don Elpidio, a local farmer we meet soon after moving in, whispers to Daddy over rum one night that the owners are mala gente, bad people. He makes a gesture with his hand, mimicking a slash across his throat. Daddy laughs.

The next morning I overhear Daddy repeating what Don Elpidio had said the night before—that our rented house belongs to two brothers who work for El Jefe, Trujillo himself. The dictator’s full title is His Excellency Generalísimo Doctor Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, Benefactor of the Republic, and he’s ruled the Dominican Republic for twenty years. Mama and Daddy sit Berta and me down to tell us we are never, ever to speak badly about Trujillo or say anything at all about the government. But Don Elpidio says that the brothers who own our rented house are asesinos.

“I’m scared,” I whisper to Mama that night when she tucks me into bed.

“There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“But Berta says asesino means killer. Will they hurt us?”

“No, no.” Mama pats me on the head. “People like to talk about things they don’t understand. These men are more like special police, and I’m sure they don’t kill innocent people.” She pulls the mosquito netting closed. “Go to sleep now. Everything’s fine.” Berta, in her bunk, snorts under her breath as if she doesn’t believe Mama. I pull the web of netting around me and stare through my cocoon at the moonlight outside the window. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think motivated the author to share her life story, and what was your response to her voice?
2. Discuss the importance of place in this memoir. How does the author use the contrast between life in the Dominican Republic and life in America as a tool?
3. One of the questions this book asks is about the importance of truth and honesty in family relationships, and about acceptance and forgiveness, especially in the relationship to self. Discuss how that is explored in the memoir.
4. How did your view of each of the characters change as you read the book?
5. Compare this book to other memoirs your group has read. Is it similar to any of them? What do you think your lasting impression of the book will be?

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