“It is a dangerous thing to forget”, these are the words chosen by
Judith Ortiz Cofer in 1987 to begin her poem “El Olvido”. Judith Ortiz
Cofer is a Puerto Rican writer born in Hormigueros in 1952. Her father
had a military career; this made her go back and forth between Puerto
Rico and the United States. Therefore we can infer she has a mixed
culture childhood, which later on is reflected in her writing. Ortiz
Cofer is best known for her works of creative nonfiction; she began her
writing career with poetry, which she feels “contains the essence of
language.” (Poetry Foundation) It is said that Oritz Cofer’s work
contains a mix of her cultural heritage and we can see this clearly in
her poem, “El Olvido”. In her poem “El Olvido” Ortiz Cofer takes a usual
problem and gives to it a touch of our Puerto Rican culture.
El Olvido
By Judith Ortiz Cofer
It is a dangerous thing
to forget the climate of your birthplace,
to choke out the voices of dead relatives
when in dreams they call you
by your secret name.
It is dangerous
to spurn the clothes you were born to wear
for the sake of fashion; dangerous
to use weapons and sharp instruments
you are not familiar with; dangerous
to disdain the plaster saints
before which your mother kneels
praying with embarrassing fervor
that you survive in the place you have chosen to live:
a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls,
a forgetting place where she fears you will die
of loneliness and exposure.
Jesús, María, y José, she says,
el ovido is a dangerous thing.
Let’s take “El Olvido” part by part. “It is a dangerous thing to
forget” it is clear from the beginning what the theme of this poem is,
forgetting, throughout the poem she expresses what is so dangerous to
forget. “It is a dangerous thing to forget the climate of your
birthplace”, dangerous it is to forget where we come from, where and how
we were born. It is not just a matter of what country we were born, but
from what mother and in what family were you born. Surely it influences
the place of your birth, but the place where we were born and from who
and how we were born should be equally important and should not be
forgotten. “It is dangerous to spurn the clothes you were born to wear”.
It is dangerous to change how you are because of stereotypes of
society. I honestly believe it should be forbidden to change who we are
and how we dress, talk, walk, eat, and dream because of fashion,
society, and other sources of influences. “Dangerous to disdain the
plaster saints before which your mother kneels praying with embarrassing
fervor that you survive in the place you have chosen to live”, it is
not forbidden to grow and move on, but you should not forget the things
you left behind. We should not forget the hands that changed our diapers
and healed our knees when we fell. Yes, it is our duty to prosper and
walk away from our birth place in order to grow and become adults, but
in that path forgetting how you got to where you are standing is not
part of it. “Jesús, María, y José”, she says, “el ovido is a dangerous
thing.” It is wise to forgive but not to forget, that is how I see it.
We should forgive the harms the past brought to us, but we should never
forget the past.
This poem spoke to me because as a college student I am in that
transition, learning to grow without forgetting. I am learning to
forgive and heal those bruises of the past without forgetting who I am,
from where I am and especially how I got to where I am right now. I am
Amanda Dee Moreno Hernández, daughter of Shylla Dee Hernández and Andres
Mejia. I am a spoiled kid and a daddy’s little girl; still I am a young
independent adult. Yes, I get lost in this so called life and it is
remembering how I got there that I get back on track. I promise to not
forget the tires I made my mother drop in order to make her smile in the
future. I promise to multiply the laughs I had shared with my dad. I
promise to forgive those that in the past made wounds to my heart. I
promise to take what my mother and fathers thought me and teach it to
those around me. I promise to remember and not to forget. Are you
willing to remember instead of forgetting?
