The plentitudes journal: On Chants and Spells
Excerpt: In one of those rare moments of childhood clarity, it struck me that the bodega was our family’s true religion. My parents would never admit to this, but I knew my revelation was true.
Latino Book Review Magazine: Cafetal
Excerpt: I peered through a crack in the vines and waited for the morning star to transform the sky into a radiant pink and blue canopy. Songbirds flew by and resentful tears tumbled down my cheeks. I accepted I earned my defeat by nearly destroying this island on a fruitless journey. I cried harder, expanding and contracting my stomach to remove every tear I had hidden. I cried for hours, then days, then months without stopping. I gave every drop of water I had to the cafetal.
Ni de aquí, Ni de allá: In between mountains
Excerpt: I let myself get lost in that childhood memory and my mind travels to that blue porch at the end of the dirt road lit by oil lamps. I make a bed out of two chairs and lay on my side to watch the flickering flames. One memory melts into another scene and I’m following my grandmother through a wooded path on our way to the river.
URBAN OMNIBUS: CONNECTING AT THE COUNTER
Excerpt: Brick and mortar strongholds, bodegas are increasingly enmeshed in complex global networks. Social media, surveillance technology, and new digital platforms all impact bodegas, where they intersect with existing analog networks of communication and exchange. The bodega is somewhere between business and community center, a place where quick transactions can easily become transformative encounters. In gentrifying neighborhoods, they act as thresholds where different socioeconomic classes, cultures, and ideas converge.
La Galeria Magazine: en La Bodega
Excerpt: The rumbling of the silver gates echoes like church bells beckoning its flock. As the veil lifts, light floods into the space, revealing the vibrant configuration of The Gonzalez Deli. The flood of school-aged children disrupts the stillness of the morning. Their chatter shakes away the silence and awakens the sleepy bodegueros. They flow into the Gonzalez Deli in large numbers, placing their small hands on every sweet and salty treat they can reach. Waves of Doritos, coffee cakes, and Little Hug juices fill the counter as Bru, the owner and my mother quickly stuffs plastic bags before the first school bell rings. Mornings in this Philadelphia bodega are quite familiar to me but this place isn't just the Gonzalez Deli, It’s the bodega, my bodega, la bodega.
Public Seminar: The Corner Store in the Digital World
Excerpt: I grew up witnessing how the day-to-day life of bodega owners and patrons intertwine. In my family’s bodega in Philadelphia, the store counter quickly becomes a public forum for the exchange of news and neighborhood gossip. Unlike sterile supermarket checkouts or overly friendly, bordering on invasive, coffee shop glass-tops, the bodega counter strikes a balance between intimacy and distance.