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The Portuguese Immigrant: Atlantic Heritage Story

I grew up around people like me but I didn't grow up reading about people like me. A child of Azorean immigrants raised in a community populated entirely by others whose family history mirrored mine. At the time, it didn't seem special since we all had the same story. What I have grown to realize is that it is special because we all had the same story. The bond is strong and unspoken between those whose families have endured the same hardships and made the same sacrifices as one another.


That's why a funny thing happened while I was reading Devin Meireles' The Portuguese Immigrant: Atlantic Heritage Story. The story is a narrative nonfiction of Devin's own grandfather's early life and immigration journey from the island of São Miguel, Azores to Canada. However, within its pages, I found reflected the stories of my own family. Striking similarities abound. It didn't matter that our families immigrated to two different countries, the experiences in his book were nearly identical to those I've heard told by my own family.

Of course we are cousins

Even funnier yet, I came to unravel that the author and I were in fact distant relatives. Devin and I made contact through Instagram after he found my It's Called Culture Podcast. We quickly realized he would be a great guest and invited him to be on an episode of the show. After reading his book and seeing familiar surnames and places, I decided to do a quick Ancestry DNA query. Sure enough, it was revealed that we were a DNA match as distant cousins. Such is the expectation when you are both descendants from the same remote island region. So much so that it has become a running joke to ponder "Are we primos (cousins)?" when I encounter others from the same island. Usually both parties laugh it off -- and then not long after, discover evidence to prove our suspected familial connections.


Deus me livre (God forbid)

The book is in English, however the sprinkling of Portuguese phrases evoked visceral reactions from me. I would read them in my grandparents voice, as they were such specific expressions echoed by all Azoreans I've ever known. I can't imagine the work that went into writing this book, as it contained a plethora of interesting historical information weaved into its storyline.


Better yet, I can't imagine the deep fear and loneliness of the immigrants of the time. They endured many years worth of separation of families, embarking on transatlantic journeys by ship or newly commercialized passenger planes, language barriers, and uncertain living and working conditions. I barely trust a plane ride in today's modern world... imagine being on some of those inaugural flights across The Atlantic Ocean coming from villages not even equipped with automobiles? Now I know why they still clap when we land.


Having been fresh off of a trip to São Miguel when I read The Portuguese Immigrant, I was able to vividly imagine the scenes described in the book. I knew the locations of the villages mentioned, the difficulty of travel between villages, the housing conditions, the layout of the capital city of Ponta Delgada -- all which helped paint the pictures of Devin's words.


It all makes sense

The biggest takeaway from Devin's book (Author's Website: Luso Loonie) and my own rediscovering of our culture is that... it all makes sense. We grew up not understanding the intricacies of how our life came to be or why our families acted in a certain way. Only by asking questions, listening, observing, researching, and reading do we discover the micro and macro influences on their behaviors that have been passed down to us through nature and nurture. Once you truly understand where you came from, the pieces of the puzzle of your own life start to fit together.


Note that there are Amazon affiliate program links in this blog post, however all linked products are hand selected for inclusion.




Culture is a way of life for an entire society. Melissa and Kelly met in Kindergarten 30 years ago. Our culture is from the Azores - a remote group of Portuguese islands. But we don't live there. We live in America as part of the millennial generational culture. This podcast is our experience at the intersection of these cultures.


In this episode, Mel & Kel discuss their heritage as Portuguese-American children of immigrants from the Azorean island of São Miguel (or "Hawaii of the Atlantic" as they describe it). Their families immigrated as late as the 1980s to Fall River, Massachusetts, a city now known for having a dramatic Portuguese influence and population. The distinctive and religious Portuguese island culture was wholly preserved in this new land.


Mel & Kel grew up completely immersed in their cultural customs, beliefs, and traditions while also attempting to navigate life as an American millennial in the 1990s and beyond. After Mel moved away as an adult, she wanted a way to reconnect with the culture and share that culture with her own daughter and thus created the company Folk and Fad. Her first order of business was to launch the It's Called Culture podcast and recruit her lifelong friend Kelly to co-host.


Below, Kelly showcases Melissa's 8th birthday gifts.

Listen to It's Called Culture (ICC) Episode 1 (trailer) here.


What makes us qualified to host this show?

We are bilingual, first-generation Portuguese-Americans. We attended the oldest Portuguese Catholic school in America. We grew up in the city with the nation's highest percentage of people of Portuguese descent (nearly 50%). We didn't meet a non-Portuguese person until we were in high school! Mel's DNA test results came back. Turns out, she's 100% that bitch. Just kidding. That's Lizzo. But Mel's DNA results did (somewhat surprisingly) come back at 100% Portuguese. Kel has been a hold out in the DNA world. Maybe because she's watched too much true crime. Or maybe because she would be devastated if it came back anything other than 100% Portuguese. So we don't "know" her results, but, I mean, we know...



Portuguese Ancestry

Accent Disclaimer



 



Portuguese Ancestry

Nobody's Ancestry DNA Kit comes back 100% anything. There's always at the very least a few random ethnicities sprinkled in for the last few percent. Mel had always thought of herself as 100% Portuguese only because both sides of her family came from The Azores. However, there WAS an adopted grandfather on one side of the family that subsequently had offspring with features that were not traditionally Portuguese (e.g. red hair). So, doubt did creep in about what the results would show.


At the end of the day, the results did come back 100% Portuguese and the Ancestry app even drew a dotted circle around the easternmost tip of São Miguel encompassing the villages where both sides of her family were from. When Mel posted about this on her TikTok account (@melanncoley), a commenter pointed her to a clip of Conan O'Brien as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Conan took a DNA test that revealed he was 100% Irish which shocked his doctor. When Conan asked his doctor how rare it was and what it meant, he replied "it means you're inbred!". Well, shit...


Accent Disclaimer

Not all Tik Tok comments are created equal, so when another commenter expressed to Mel that he "could have gone his whole life without hearing your voice", we realized an accent disclaimer may be necessary. Our unique voices are the result of a combination of several factors. We are first generation Americans. We are directly descended from non-English speaking families. We grew up learning two languages at once. Kel grew up in a Portuguese-speaking household and had to learn English through the school system. At best, we grew up around an informal English-Portuguese hybrid. And our Portuguese was not even the proper European kind. It was a brute, slang-y version spoken in the most remote parts of the island of São Miguel. Pair all of that with being raised less than 60 miles from Boston and you've got yourself a real recipe for disastahhh.


We hope you find our voices and our show endearing, or you keep it to yourself if you don't!


This post contains affiliate links as part of the Amazon Associate Program.




I stumbled on this book in the Fall River Public Library while doing research on Portuguese Immigration to kick off my podcast "It's Called Culture". First I found the five volume Spinner: People and Culture in Southeastern Massachusetts series. I was thrilled and knew I could find some useful information in there. You can't talk about culture in that geographic location without mentioning the Portuguese. But then I glanced over on the shelf and found a tattered version of the Portuguese Spinner. I hit the Jackpot. A 287-page memoir of Portuguese immigration and assimilation as told by the people themselves. The pages are large and filled with pictures to accompany each story. The one problem was that this book was nearly 25 years old and looked like it had been handled by the entire Portuguese population. The first 50 pages or so were loose and no longer attached to the spine.


I checked it out anyway. Among these pages were the stories of people identical to my immediate family members. Reasons for leaving the islands. Splitting up families to immigrate. Being stranded at the airport. Seeing snow for the first time. Packing families into tenement houses. Low wage factory work. Creating urban gardens. I devoured the book. When it was time to return it to the library I knew that I wanted to search for and purchase my own copy to keep. I found it relatively inexpensively on Amazon.



Click to purchase. This is part of my participation in Amazon's Associate Program.







From the Back Cover

Portuguese Spinner: An American Story is the first attempt to capture, in popular form, the saga of Portuguese migration and the people's struggle to build a new life in America. This diverse collection includes oral history, folk tales, original literary contributions, scholarly reports and popular journalism. Hundreds of photographs portray the magnificent beauty of the Portuguese islands and maintain, and take us into the many corners of American life where Luso Americans have left their mark.
Portuguese Spinner celebrates the influence of the Portuguese on the culture and the landscape of southeastern New England, and recognizes their impact in the community, in the workplace, and in professional life. See the glorious gardens of Portugal bloom in urban yards in New England. Journey aboard ships in pursuit of whales and fish. Enter the neighborhood, and celebrate at a Portuguese feast. This truly American story reads like a family album -- brave, true and from the heart -- told by scholars, citizen historians and by the people themselves.
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