NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

IDEOLOGICALLY, Nimia Vicens and her brother José Juan Vicens Huertas, my grandfather, were polar opposites. In a family of 12 children, they represented extremes in the spectrum of Puerto Rican identity: Nimia was a noted poet and an active member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, known for its fervent calls for Puerto Rican independence from the island’s colonial rulers and, to the party’s enemies, occasional terrorist bombings. José Juan, a politically conservative World War II veteran who served in Europe and retired from the National Guard as a one-star general, had no interest in Puerto Rican autonomy. Instead he hoped his country would become the 51st state, with its residents enjoying the same rights as other US citizens.

My father, José Javier Vicens Morales—who died in 2016, and whom everyone knew as Jay Vicens—and his brother grew up with this contradictory tension between assimilating as mainland Americans and maintaining a distinct Puerto Rican identity. My father left