The Vale of Happiness: Book One by makalani nosakhere (snippet)

…Cordillera Central, Hispaniola, West Indies. 1633.

We chose life in the Cordillera Central mountain range, over existence on the sugar plantations of the Spanish.

Subsistence through Earth’s elements, over subservience in the colonial labor force.

Still, our ex-captors had no intention of leaving any of the island outside their sphere of influence.

San Juan Valley, Dominican Republic. 1922.

It took ten generations, but the threat of their economic inequity would engulf the San Juan Valley we called home.

Tired of running, we used organized, armed resistance, led by my grandfather, Olivorio ‘Liborio’ Mateo.

At fourteen, my mother watched her mother, Madeira, free Liborio’s bullet-riddled body from barbwire and wooden posts.

She was told that he was left there by the American forces who killed him, to act as a warning to the rest.

After grandfather’s murder, the Republic gained a tighter grip over the entire Valley.

Ill-equipped, his people could fight and die, resign to cutting cane, or run once more.

I was born fourteen years after the assassination, and the three of us - grandmother, mother, daughter - would live as outlaws, bouncing all over the island, until my fourteenth birthday….