Part Two: Pura Belpré: The Puerto Rican Librarian Who Brought Bilingual Storytelling to New York

speaking of libraries, I actually myself. My co host recently wrote a book based on our show, Intersectional Feminism, and I have completely hidden that from my mother in fear of her being angry with me.

best that I can. Her name was the first one on the list that was given to me by a librarian at the conference this year, And yeah, I was gonna do them all, but it looks like I'm doing Purim and the rest will do it some other time. Poor A Belprey was born on February second. Normally you'd say what year someone was born after you say the date. Who fucking knows what year she was born. Sources will claim at ninety nine, nineteen oh one, nineteen oh two,

and nineteen oh three. She claimed nineteen oh three, so I'm going to go with that one. I will let her self identify birth year. It's almost like weird, Well, they're supporting documents claiming other years, so it's not just a like we don't trust her or whatever. Right, she was generally reasonably cagey about her time in Puerto Rico as a kid, and which, you know, whatever, Like no one needs to talk about their childhood unless the host of a podcast brings it up rudely at the top

of an episode. So like, she's not a public figure, she's a librarian. You know, a lot of what is known about her are educated guesses. But she was one of five kids who grew up in a loving and religious family, most likely Catholic, but she didn't seem to write or talk much about religion as best as I can tell. She also seems to have written or talked

very little about being black. We've talked about this before on the show, Like on the episodes we did about the Young Lords, which is this Puerto Rican I guess Hall sort of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers, and that's fair, but also they're peers, so it's like, well, then the black Panthers are the Black Young Lords whatever, you know, right, Anyway, we talked about how Puerto Rican racial identity, at least historically looks really different than race looks in the Continental US.

So it's like, makes a lot of sense that she identified strongly as Puerto Rican and that is mostly what she talked about. She later married a black man and regularly lived in black neighborhoods, but it seems that her identity was primarily Puerto Rican. What she did write and talk about was her connection to the legacy of Puerto Rican folklore. She wrote quote, I grew up in a home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed

down by word of mouth for generations. As a child, I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I had heard. The characters became quite real to me. I remember during school recess that some of us would gather under the shade of the tam entree. There we would take turns

telling stories. The best guess that people make it almost feels like ghoulish, the way that people write biographies, where you're like trying to dredge up this stuff that people clearly just didn't really want to talk about, and there's no reason that anyone should really care about the real, specific nitty gritty of the class upbringing of this you

know person, But yeah, you know, here we are. The best guess is that she was in a family that was sort of culturally middle class, but without money, right, without much money. Her father was a building contractor who moved the family around a lot for work, and she grew up speaking Spanish, English, and French, and both of her parents were literate. Her older sister at least taught in Puerto Rico for ten years before moving to New York City. This is one of the earlier waves of

Puerto Rican movement into the US. And again, if you want to hear way more about that. Listen to our episodes about the young Lords. Porta graduated high school in nineteen nineteen, then started college at the University of Puerto Rico. But when Alise got married in nineteen twenty, the whole family traveled to New York City for the wedding and Poro was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm staying in New York.

And so she stayed in New York and at first she got work as a seamstress, which was one of the main jobs available to Puerto Rican immigrants at the time. But then in nineteen twenty one, she was hired by the Public Library of New York, which means I can introduce another hero of the episode. Ernestine Rose never met anyone named Ernestine. One day. I'm going to meet a trans woman named Ernestine, because trans women loved to name

ourselves like weird old timing names, said Margaret. And I definitely know some like Agatha's and you know, whatever.

She apparently claimed she was Jewish and then one historian I read disputes this who graduated from library school in nineteen oh five, making her one of the first bona fide librarians in the United States of America, and she hit the ground running to try and make libraries cooler. By nineteen oh eight, she was working hard to make sure that whatever library she was in was actually integrated

into the ethnic community that it was part of. So that's like the big thing we're going to talk about is integrating libraries into the communities that they're part of, instead of being sort of, you know, a place that shows up and is like everyone should think like these

white people think. And at the beginning, this meant serving the Yiddish and Russian speaking Jewish community that she worked in, which is probably the community we've talked about a thousand times on this show, because that's where all the weird the anarchists and communists from Russia were hanging out because they were all Yiddish speaking Jews in like the nineteen tens in New York City, and later she moved to Harlem to a black and Jewish community and immediately started

hiring non white people for the library, like Katherine Allen, a Black Woman. She also organized the nineteen twenty one exhibition of Quote Negro art at the library, which, according to author George Hutchinson, Quote marked the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance in the visual arts. She made Shit Happen then, also in nineteen twenty one, she hired puro Belprey because there was a sizeable and growing Puerto Rican community in

the neighborhood as well. She actually first tried to hire Elease, the sister who got married, but then Elisa's husband told her she wasn't allowed to go get this job. It's like a throwaway line, like most of the things you read are like was offered to a Lease who was busy and couldn't do it, And then you read the slightly more in depth piece and is like her husband told her she couldn't, so she didn't.

clearly the children's room. This was the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch of the library in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, and soon the library was the center of that cultural renaissance, or was a center of that cultural renaissance. And I still haven't deep dived the Harlem Renaissance, and I'm not going to do it today, But we've touched on a few times, like on our episodes about

Ben Fletcher, the black labor organizer from Philly. Also, my great grandmother was like a white artist who knew a lot of the people in scene, especially where it overlapped with like leftism more broadly. And so I really want to learn more about it at some point, but I didn't this time. Suffice it to say, Harlem was the coolest shit place in the nineteen twenties where black people did a ton of amazing cultural stuff, and the library was part of it. It was intentionally part of it.

Because librarians didn't start off as magically known as a place where people could meet and do things. It seems like they were seen as white places for white stuff.

Until all these people at the one hundred and thirty Fifth Street branch changed that they held talks by like Langston, Hughes and a bunch of other folks, and one librarian later wrote about this time quote, if you are familiar with Harlem, you are aware of the fact that the streets are frequently made impassable by the many soapbox speakers

and their enthusiastic audiences. It occurred to us that if people will listen to politics and patent medicines, then they will listen to education, provided it as well presented to them. So we employed one of the most eloquent and most popular of these speakers and paid him to address large crowds at strategic corners on the streets of Harlem once a week. These people were urged to come to a meeting at the library. Some two thousand people were reached

each week. If out of these fifty appeared at the library, we were confident that something worthwhile had been accomplished. And so they just yeah, got people to come to the library.

The other thing that I think is really important to take away from that is from the very beginning, soapboxing, which everyone understands, is the podcasting of the oldie times, frequently mixed up politics and patent medicines, which brings us to the next segment of this show, the advertisers, and we're back, and so yeah, this library, well the Division of Negro Literature History in Prince in nineteen twenty five.

Ernestine Rose also helped the first black woman get through library school, a woman named Nella Larson, who worked for a while at the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch, but is much more famous for her place in literature as a writer of American modernism. And it's like the most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. And there are biographies about her. And so I'm like, nope, too much of a side character. Can't because one day probably topic of her own.

say it because it's not. Because I really appreciate that verified because like I everyone knows that listens to this. I'm an enemy of any time anyone says the first person who did something something because right, like you can't prove it just anyway whatever my brain works in a very specific way.

Mary gold Davis. So during that class she writes a children's book called Peezzi Martine. This goes on to be published in nineteen thirty two as the first Spanish language children's book published by a mainstream press in the United States. And it is a romance between a cockroach and a mouse. And she is very clear this is not her story.

She heard this from her grandmother, and it is a Puerto Rican story, like a lot of I've only been able to track down some of her stuff, and it'll specifically say like a Puerto Rican story rather than like it'll have her name as the author, but instead of saying, like buy what about prey, it would say like a Puerto Rican story. It's it's it's pretty interesting.

make them evil. We know all about that. So having people who take the opportunity and time to write it down so that they can share and be preserved, it's such a phenomenal thing to see and being able to see their love for their heritage, even like it just feels like I'm being honored, like I'm being privileged to see and hear about their culture, and I love that aspect. Folklore is so beautiful to me, just because of that.

When I started learning more about like Korean folklore, I was like, what, And you just feel this sense of connectedness to something that you may not have like in so long or ever. So that's something to two with, like we should definitely be honoring people like her, Yeah, who are preserving such tales and traditions. I love that.

really interesting. But people actually writing from that culture, which is what we see more now, is you're more guaranteed to get the like actual love of that culture instead of like yeah, and it's funny too because you'll still even see, like check out this weird thing the Ukrainians believe over there in weird Land, you know, because the Ukrainians weren't white in the Victorian mind, like I mean whatever,

they weren't, right. It's complicated, but it's complicating, Yeah, but it's interesting they bring up this thing about writing these stories down because it's when we talk about next. Libraries had a problem. They were colonized as fuck, right, as like an institution, So the only real stories by the library's mind are the ones that are written down. So storytelling for Storytelling Hour had to come from a book.

Western libraries didn't understand the idea of oral literacy yet, right, the idea that you can be aware of your culture through oral traditions. Poor about Pray broke that she was the first person probably to appeal and win the right to tell stories that had never been written down. During storytime, Mary gold Davis, her teacher, told her, tell your stories, but only tell the children that none of these stories

have been written down, but maybe someday they will. It's like this like almost paternalistic, but it's still this like love where like yeah, it isn't amazing, but one day they'll be real stories. But it's still like, it's still the pretty genuine like poor actually has very She thought very highly of the white women librarians who sought her out and nurtured her career and helped her break into

this white dominated field. Right, So she told the stories that eventually would find their way into another one of her books, The Tiger and the Rabbit, which was the first English language collection of Puerto Rican folklore in the US. And she starts writing, and her branch is doing amazing

stuff in the black community. And then in nineteen twenty nine she transfers to one hundred and fifteenth Street branch in a Puerto Rican community, and it's here that she really hits her stride and starts kicking ass as a librarian. As far as I can tell, she pioneered Spanish language content in public libraries. I expect she did it as part of a team of people who are also amazing, right, But she worked her ass off to get the community

involved in the library. At some point she watched a puppet show at her branch and was like, oh, this is the shit puppet's rule. I'm sure, that's how she said it. And so for the rest of her life she worked with kids to put on puppet shows because that was part of it, was that by doing puppets you could bring the kids into it, right. And she went around to churches, to community centers, to neighborhood organizations and schools to put on shows and like just do

outreach into community. She did bilingual shows regularly too, not just Spanish language shows. And this just like hadn't been done. She put on events for three Kings Day, a Puerto Rican holiday, and she said this quote indirectly presented the library to this group in a way that no other

activity could have done. Their confidence was gained. The library put on complete programs in Spanish for children and for adults, and basically they did at the one hundred and fifteenth branch what one hundred and thirty fifth branch did for the black community. And there's a downside to this, although I've read conflicting tales of it, there's a problem if I actually looking into too many sources, as they all started arguing with each other, you know, right, Okay, so

this isn't the librarian's fault. But instead of racist city government's fault. Basically, these two libraries served as quote ghettos where all black and Spanish language content could be put, where all black and latinae workers could be hired. So it was like you try and get hired as a black worker, and they'll be like, oh, we'll go up to one hundred and thirty fifth and they're like that's not where I live, you know, and they'd be like, oh, we already have a black library, like we don't need

another one. And so that's a problem, and this limits their career advancement, right because you can only work in this one place.

the other hand, are funded by private companies. And that is just the compromises that everyone makes all the time, like the following compromises. Here they are and we're back. In nineteen forty. She goes to the ala, the American Library Association convention in Cincinnati, and while she's there, she meets a musician and composer named Clarence Cameron White, who is we're going to get to the first like potential

drama that I'm entirely inferring. The way that the story is presented is that she meets him and then they get married a couple years later, and everything's happy and great. And I started writing it by reading about him and being like, oh, he was recently widowed or widowered or whatever. He recently lost his wife. The complication she meets him in nineteen forty, his wife doesn't tie until nineteen forty two, and they don't get married till nineteen forty three. What happened?

like acting out these different characters. I could only imagine what kind of performances she gave in her storytelling, and with that, what type of passion she has, and just like in her imagination being able to relay these stories in a way that she was so successful enough to be known to do this as well as writing these stories, I just imagine she's just one of those people no

totally that you can't help but notice anyway. Yeah, and then the effort she puts in telling these stories is not telling a story, it is living that story for the children or with the children, and I could only imagine that's kind of how she also lived life.

love with Clarence White. You know, he's got his own Wikipedia page as a composer and was one of the most prominent violinists in the country. And after they get married, Pura takes a leave of absence from the library to follow him around on tour for a bit, and then she goes back to the library and then she's like, you know what, I actually want to focus on my writing, and so she just kind of wants to be doing the art stuff and hell yeah, and so she does

that for a while. She writes. As far as I can tell, she keeps up the storytelling and the puppets during this time, but I'm not one hundred percent certain, but it's like implied, and she writes like eight books. Seventeen years into married life, her husband dies of larynx cancer in nineteen sixty. She goes back to the library to a new post, one that I think they might

have made just for her, the Spanish children specialist. And so at this point that whole thing about like the Spanish language stuff only being at one or two branches is not the case. That was actually some of the stuff that there seemed to be drama about.

nineteen thirties. Basically, anyway, at this point, Spanish language stuff all over wherever it's needed, and so she just goes to every branch where it's needed and helps plan events and helps bilingualize the New York City Public library system, which is, if that's all she had done, it would have been amazing.

people she was born in nineteen oh three. You know, I wonder if it was so that she could keep working a couple extra years.

for children's books by Latino authors. A librarian originally from the Dominican Republic named Viennella Rivas told NPR in twenty sixteen, quote, because of her, we have a story time in Spanish, we have computer classes in Spanish, and I feel like, as a Latina librarian, we have a responsibility to continue

doing the work that she started. Shockingly, her books are out of print right now, despite her being the earliest known Afro Caribbean American writer, despite there being an award in her name, And yeah, there are still three more librarians on that list of cool librarians that I was handed. So expect to be returning to this subject. But I wanted to read some of her stories on book club, but I haven't found a PDF of it yet. The

Internet Archive had one, but they're hacked right now. I found one really short story and so fuck it, I'm going to read it to you all.

a Puerto Rican context. And like so it's like interesting because I can't say as cleanly how it relates to indigenous culture. Right. Basically, that's my way of saying, if the story had been written by a white person, I would be suspect of.

One day, when Alita had come to the pool to rest after a long walk, a young Indian came there to pick some fruit from the trees. Alita was surprised, for he was not of her tribe. Yet he said he was no stranger to the pool. This was where he had first seen Alida, and he had often returned since then to pick the fruit. Hoping to see her again, he told her about himself to make her feel at home.

He confessed with honesty and frankness that he was a member of the dreaded Carab tribe that had so often attacked the island of Barenkan. As a young boy, he had been left behind after one of those raids, and he had stayed on the island ever since. Alida listened closely to his story, and the two became friends. They met again in the days that followed, and their friendship grew stronger. Alida admired the young man's courage in living

among his enemies. She learned to call him by his Carab name, Taru, and he called her Alida, just as her own people did. Before long, their friendship had turned into love. Their meetings by the pool were always brief. Alida was afraid their secret might be discovered, and careful though she was. There came a day when someone saw them and told her father. Alida was forbidden to visit the Pamrosa Pool, and to put an end to her romance with the stranger, her father decided to marry her

to a man of his own. Choosing preparations for the wedding started at once. Alita was torn with grief, and one evening she cried out to her god, Oh Yuki, U help me kill me, or do what you will with me, but do not let me marry this man whom I do not love. And the great God yukiyou took pity on her and changed her into a delicate red flower. Meanwhile, Taru, knowing nothing of Alita's sorrow, still waited for her by the Pamerosa pool. Day after day

he waited. Sometimes he stayed there until a mantle of stars was spread across the sky. One night, the moon took pity on him, Taro. She called from her place high above the stars, Oh, Taru, wait no longer for Alda, your secret was made known, and Alita was to be married to a man of her father's choosing. In her grief, she called to her god Yukiyu. He heard her plea for help and changed her into a red flower. Ahi Ahe cried, Taru, Oh Moon, what is the name of

the red flower? Only Yukayu knows that. The moon replied. Then Taro called out, O, Yukayu, God of my Alida, help me too, help me to find her. And just as the Great God had heard Alida's plea, he listened now to Tarou and decided to help him. There by the Pomerosa pool, before the moon and the silent stars, the Great God changed Taru into a small, many colored bird. Fly Kalibri, and find your love among the flowers, he said. Off went the Kalibri, flying swiftly, and as he flew,

his wings made a sweet humming sound. In the morning, the Indians saw a new bird darting around among the flowers, swift as an arrow and brilliant as a jewel. They heard the humming of its wings, and in amazement they saw it hover in the air over every blossom, kissing the petals of the flowers with its long, slender bill. They liked the new bird with the music in its wings,

and they called it humming bird. Ever since then, the little many colored bird has hovered over every flower he finds, but returns most often to the flowers that are red. He is still looking, always looking for the one red flower that will be his loss, Tolita. He has not found her yet. That's the story.

absolutely believe these are tales from her community. Yeah, which is gorgeous, And I love that she was able to preserve that and share that, because that's what we know when it comes to like indigenous and like especially older religious groups, is the is the stories of creation, of love in creation. It is so beautiful, and I love that she preserved that so we could hear these stories I know.

folk tales and so reading not that. But the oldest that I can find is like from the sweet Spot, you know.

the reason people believe in them. But not knowing that obviously Puerto Rico, it makes sense to know there's an indigenous group there, yeah, and community there that needs to be preserved and their history should be preserved and deserved to be preserved. Uh yeah, probably should be in power whatever whatnot. But all of that to say is now, like you brought this understanding through the talks of a library. I love. I love the connectedness of it, I.

she did about keeping this stuff alive. And then like, obviously language is an important part of I mean, obviously Spanish is in the indigenous language, but compared to English, for an immigrant community, it's like really important to have Stuffy specifically, Yeah, just like making the library a space that's actually for the communities as part of I just I was really impressed by her story, and I like, and it's a lot of stuff that I take for granted,

like even the story about the origin of libraries. I had just been like, right, oh, yeah, of course a country has to a country has to have roads. A country has to have public lending libraries, otherwise it's not really a country, is it. And it's like, well, actually, uh, you know, we're pretty new to having them.

existed before them, you know, for us. So all of that is beautiful, as well as the fact that you know, I love things like the little libraries. You know that

you see the look a birdhouse looking, Yeah, libraries. But in order to kind of take back control from those who are trying to ban books and trying to like make libraries the enemies somehow, when stories like these are so important and then people like her brought traditions and tell folklore to life to children who didn't understand or maybe for a long time, especially you know, you know, as a person who immigrated to the US was taught

to learn what learn US culture and white culture, essentially to truly understand the country if you want to be a citizen, instead of understanding that their culture was just as important to the makeup of this area, specifically New Yorkers who are from Puerto Rico and children who may have been born in New York but their families are from Puerto Rico and then being able to learn about their culture and to appreciate their own culture. Like, wow, she did so much in such an early time. Like

obviously I'm very excited. Yeah, you opened up these big box and I'm like, oh my god, I love everything about this, including the libraries.

I'm I think that that stuff matters. But this idea that fiction is distinct as this like lesser thing is something that we're finally starting to break away from. And I think part of the way that we break away from it is exactly what you're talking about about, how these stories and this idea of culture, like stories are how you preserve culture in a lot of ways, and so like stories matter, fiction matters just as much, you know. Yeah,

And I love I just think libraries are cool. I've already spoken it too so far on this tour, and like I can't wait to speak at more of them. And yeah, yeah.

what I would like to hear. Like that was perfectly done, and you telling it was so perfectly like, Yeah, obviously Margaret is a writer. She's definitely a storyteller here. It is like being able to hear it through you. Both of those were shows, kiss, so thank you for sharing with me.

can do that as well. We also have a book and it's called Stuff Mom Never Told You. Actually at libraries, we were able to find them that the Seattle library and a New York library cool Boston who he hadn't writen the book yet, so if you want to go check it out at the library.

a different country, But why would I want to. I like my dog more than I like you, dear listener, And that's not even a slight against you. It's just how much I like my dog. But that's unrelated. And also I have a book out called The Sapling Cage, just what I'm a tour about, and you should go

read it is fiction. I have a bunch of other books too, including the most entertainingly titled is Escape from Insul Island, So you can go read that if you want, and you could also listen to Cooler Zone Media because nothing would be funnier than watching me complain about ads and then there's no ads and wouldn't that be funny? And also you can listen to all the cool zone media podcasts that way, including awful lot of shows including Wait,

there's one I really liked recently. Oh, there's a really good it could happen here about the future of coffee done by Prop who does hood politics with Prop and it is like one of the best encapsulations of climate crisis and also how capitalism and extractive practices work, and also how cooperativism. It was just like, I don't even drink coffee.