Historical Context
In 1898, following the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was transferred to the United States under the Treaty of Paris. Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917. During World War II, the island became a significant U.S. military base. On June 4, 1951, Puerto Ricans approved a law allowing them to create their own constitution. Subsequently, on July 25, 1952, Puerto Rico was declared a Commonwealth of the United States. This status grants Puerto Ricans most of the rights enjoyed by other U.S. citizens, though they cannot vote in presidential elections and generally do not pay federal income taxes. Since 1952, several elections have been conducted to reaffirm Puerto Rico's commonwealth status, but opinions remain divided. Over the years, some groups have pushed for the island's independence, occasionally using violent means. Since 1968, Puerto Rico's government has oscillated between maintaining commonwealth status, pursuing statehood, or seeking independence. In a 1993 vote, 43 percent of citizens supported retaining commonwealth status, 46 percent favored statehood, and 4 percent opted for independence.
Since the end of World War II, when Puerto Ricans were enlisted into the U.S. military, there has been a steady flow of migration between Puerto Rico and the mainland United States. Ruth Gruber notes in Puerto Rico, Island of Promise, "New York has the same pull to Puerto Ricans that it had to the America-bound immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their relatives are in New York; there is security in family." Prior to 1948, 95 percent of Puerto Rican immigrants to the mainland chose New York as their destination. Although this percentage has decreased over time, New York remains the primary destination for Puerto Rican migrants.
Puerto Ricans leave the island for various reasons, primarily in search of employment opportunities and a better quality of life, as jobs are limited at home. Unlike many other immigrants who come to the U.S. to escape persecution or oppressive regimes, Puerto Ricans often have a strong sense of national pride. However, Puerto Rico itself is small and lacks sufficient natural resources to support its population, which continues to grow rapidly. The island's population density is higher per square mile than any U.S. state except New Jersey and Rhode Island, leading to persistent unemployment and poverty issues.
Many Puerto Ricans, like the family of Ortiz Cofer, frequently move between the Island and the mainland due to ease of travel and mixed experiences on the mainland. The large influx of Puerto Ricans into New York, in particular, has led to the formation of slums, gangs, and significant racial prejudice against them. Mainland Americans often overlook the fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and historically, they have faced similar exploitation and disregard as illegal immigrants. In the past two decades, however, the Puerto Rican community has increasingly assimilated, with many relocating to suburbs such as Paterson, New Jersey, as depicted in Ortiz Cofer's stories.
Literary Style
Point of View
"Bad Influence" is told from Rita's perspective, with her narrative evolving as the story progresses. Initially, Rita's account is sharply critical, full of sarcasm, and quite humorous. She embodies the archetypal frustrated, witty teenager, often exaggerating and expressing disdain for older generations. To her, everything about Puerto Rico seems unbearable until she experiences a lovely morning at the beach with her grandmother, while Papá Juan tends to Angela and her mother. As Rita befriends Angela and celebrates her fifteenth birthday with a grand fiesta, her viewpoint gradually becomes more accepting; she begins to adapt to island life and finds enjoyment rather than merely tolerating it. Although her sarcastic, know-it-all attitude remains, her critiques become more gentle and considerate. For instance, early...
(This entire section contains 1304 words.)
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in the story, she refers to her grandfather's car as a "tiny subcompact," but by the end, when she accompanies her grandparents to pick up her family at the airport, she affectionately calls it "his toy car." Over the summer, Rita's perspective broadens, allowing her to embrace Puerto Rican aspects as part of her identity.
Setting
The setting of "Bad Influence" plays a central role in the story, focusing on Rita's sense of place and her connection to it. Despite her Puerto Rican heritage, at fifteen, Rita strongly identifies with her life in Paterson, New Jersey, including her home, school, and friends. Consequently, even though she spends two weeks annually in Puerto Rico for vacation, she anticipates her summer there to be, in her words, "strange." Her emphasis on this word highlights not only the peculiar events of the summer but also her perception of the island as foreign and disconnected from her identity. Physically, she finds the environment unpleasant, describing it as excessively hot and humid: "it was like I had opened an oven door." The physical climate serves as a metaphor for the personal atmosphere, where, like the weather, people in Puerto Rico are close-knit, passionate, quick-tempered, and very expressive.
In Puerto Rico, Rita confronts a culture she perceives as not only foreign in its closeness but also outdated and mystical. Reflecting stereotypes of Latin Americans, her grandparents are devout Catholics with holy water and an altar in their home, believing in her grandfather's spiritual abilities. She must adjust to a lifestyle that involves waking before dawn and engaging with a diverse community, rather than solely interacting with peers her own age. By summer's end, Rita learns mystical lessons from her grandfather and adapts to island life by forming a friendship with Angela and regularly visiting the beach. Through these experiences, she blends elements of traditional Puerto Rican life into her modern American identity.
Symbolism
The symbolism in "Bad Influence" primarily highlights the contrast between life on the island and life in the United States. When Mamá Ana and Papá Juan pick up Rita at the airport, they all cram into what Rita describes as her grandfather's subcompact car. Rita fixates on the small, old car, judging it by American standards as a sign of status. In a similar vein, conveniences like air conditioning are noticeably absent from her grandparents' home, much to her disappointment. She frequently mentions the lack of A.C., making it significant when she attributes the literal and metaphorical chill in Angela's house to the possibility that these affluent people might have air conditioning. Access to A.C. signifies wealth and status, yet it is telling that Angela's home, where she and her mother are distant, is cool inside, whereas Mamá and Papá's vibrant, cozy home is excessively warm. Throughout the story, Rita complains about the uncomfortable heat, which serves as an apt metaphor for her personal feelings; her grandparents are too warm, too close, and even suffocating to her when she first arrives on the island. Over time, she gradually acclimates both physically and emotionally to the temperature and climate, or she copes with the discomfort by visiting the beach and finding solace with her peer, Angela.
Rita herself symbolizes the fusion of two worlds, the American and the Puerto Rican. It is no coincidence that on the day she arrives, Papá Juan glimpses into her dream while comforting his confused rooster, Ramon. Ramon has a distorted sense of time, confusing day for night and vice versa. Similarly, Rita feels out of sync in her new environment, and although she believes she sees the world clearly, her perspective is skewed by her viewpoint as an American teenager, which is not always reliable. Her perception of life on the island is affected by the fact that she is somewhat of an outsider, and, as she admits, Spanish is "not my best language." By the story's end, having been a catalyst for Angela's healing and somewhat her own, Rita gains a more balanced understanding of life in both New Jersey and Puerto Rico. She claims to be a mind-reader herself, and although this aligns with her adolescent sense of all-knowing, she has developed a sharper sense of perception by the end of the summer.
Literary Heritage
Puerto Rico's literary legacy is deeply rooted in its complex history, marked by the convergence of pre-Hispanic Indian communities, Spanish colonial rule, African influences through the slave trade, and more recently, American imperialism. The oral traditions of the Caribbean's Indians and Africans existed long before the Spanish arrived in 1493. During the 1500s, the meeting between Spanish conquistadors and the Taínos, the island's indigenous people, sparked a surge of letters, records, and poetry in Spanish, capturing the essence of the newly encountered land and its inhabitants. While Spanish became Puerto Rico's dominant language, it was enhanced by the inclusion of Indian vocabulary. Arturo Morales Carrión, in Puerto Rico, A Political and Cultural History, notes that this linguistic blend "infuses the Spanish language of the conquistadors with an indigenous hue and offers a fresh perspective of humanity and life in a previously unknown setting to Europeans before America's discovery." He further explains, "The Taíno-origin vocabulary imparts a distinct flavor and color to the Spanish language, evoking the Caribbean's prehistoric past," which remains evident in place names and everyday speech. "The island's oral literature reveals traces of pre-Colombian Indian poetry through anecdotes, proverbs, and legends." This rich oral tradition has evolved into the modern practice of the jíbaro storyteller, representing rural Puerto Ricans. Carrión observes that "The jíbaro and the urban poor continue to share stories orally, transforming everyday experiences, fears, and aspirations into legends that add beauty to the island's historical and contemporary reality."
Carrión states, "From the late sixteenth century until 1897, traditions and customs bore the mark of the Catholic religion, infused with elements of Taíno and African cultures." The fusion of Catholic mysticism with African and Indigenous spiritualism contributes to the unique blend of reality and fantasy in Latin American literature, both written and oral, known as magical realism. Regarding Puerto Rico in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Carrión notes, "Country folklore, municipal festivities, and the plantation became focal points for artists, poets, storytellers, and anonymous bards, while intellectuals began to critique various aspects of colonialism." Since Spain colonized Puerto Rico, Spanish has been the island's dominant language. However, the American influence since 1917 has also impacted the language and literature, resulting in most people being bilingual. The themes in contemporary oral and written traditions, along with the revival of Taíno vocabulary, highlight and document a strong sense of cultural resistance. The significant migration of Puerto Ricans between the U.S. mainland and the island further fuels the desire to preserve Puerto Rican culture amid a divided national identity. This struggle for identity is reflected not only in Ortiz Cofer's work but also in the works of other Puerto Ricans, using the metaphor of the island as a representation of the self—distinct yet inseparable from a larger entity.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Bishop, Rudine Sims, review, in Horn Book, September-October 1995, p. 581.
Gruber, Ruth, Puerto Rico: Island of Promise, Hill and Wang, 1960, p. 177.
Luís, William, Dance between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States, Vanderbilt University Press, 1997, pp. 27, 95.
Morales Carrión, Arturo, Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History, W. W. Norton, 1983, pp. 319, 322-25.
Ocasio, Rafael, "The Infinite Variety of the Puerto Rican Reality: An Interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer," in Callaloo, Vol. 17, No. 3, Summer 1994, pp. 730-42.
----, "Puerto Rican Literature in Georgia: An Interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer," in Kenyon Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Fall 1992, pp. 43-50.
Ortiz Cofer, Judith, An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio, Orchard Books, 1995, pp. 1-5, 13, 22, 25.
----, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood, Arte Publico Press, 1990, pp. 17, 63.
Rochman, Hazel, review, in Booklist, Vol. 91, No. 12, February 15, 1995, p. 1082.
Vasilakis, Nancy, review, in Horn Book, Vol. 71, No. 4, July-August 1995, p. 464.
Further Reading
Ortiz Cofer, Judith, contributor, Puerto Rican Writers at Home in the U.S.A., Open Hand, 1991. This work provides a literary and cultural examination of modern Puerto Rican authors who write from the U.S. mainland.
Sedillo Lopez, Antoinette, Latino Communities: Emerging Voices, Political, Social, Cultural, and Legal Issues, University of New Mexico Press, Garland Series, 1998. This book offers an exploration of contemporary Latin American influences, including artistic movements, and presents a detailed discussion on magical realism.
