Nilda by Nicholasa Mohr

First published: 1973; illustrated by the author

Type of work: Social realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, family, and race and ethnicity

Time of work: 1941-1945

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: New York City

Principal Characters:

• Nilda Ramirez, a bright, energetic ten-year-old, who lives in the barrio of New York
• Lydia Ramirez, her mother, who is a devout Catholic, devoted to her family
• Emilio Ramirez, Lydia’s husband and Nilda’s stepfather, a Spanish immigrant, whose radical anti-Fascist views make him bitterly resent the Church
• Aunt Delia, Lydia’s sister, an old woman, whose paranoia and unpredictability often provide comic relief
• Victor Ortega, Nilda’s older brother, who is the child of her mother’s first husband and was born in Puerto Rico
• Paul Ortega, another older brother, who is also the child of Nilda’s mother’s first husband
• Frankie Ortega, three years older than Nilda, who is also a child from her mother’s first marriage
• Jimmy Ortega, Nilda’s other brother, who is a child from her mother’s first marriage and an unreliable drug addict
• Leo Ortiz, Nilda’s natural father, who is a bartender living in the barrio
• Sophie, the mother of Jimmy’s child, whose parents refuse to acknowledge her and her baby
• Petra Lopez, Nilda’s best friend, who develops an early interest in boys and becomes pregnant
• Benjie Lopez, Petra’s brother and Nilda’s friend

The Story

When the reader first meets ten-year-old Nilda Ramirez, she is playing with her friends in the heat of a New York summer. Someone opens the fire hydrant, and all the residents enjoy themselves until the police come and threaten to arrest everyone. Soon afterward, Nilda is sent to a Catholic charity camp, where the bleak surroundings are matched by the hard manner of the nuns and priests. When a breakdown in the plumbing forces the camp directors to send all the children home, Nilda is sure that her prayers to the Blessed Virgin have been answered.

Back home in New York, Sophie appears at the family’s apartment and announces that she is pregnant with Jimmy’s child. Meanwhile, the school year starts; Nilda hears her teacher, Miss Langhorn, complain about “foreigners,” and accompanies her mother to the Welfare Office. At home, however, she enjoys a close relationship with her mother, her three brothers, and her ailing stepfather, a crusty old communist. Nilda’s other comfort is her artwork, to which she turns when she is hurt or angry.

When Sophie gives birth to a baby boy, Nilda’s mother urges her to try to reconcile with Sophie’s bigoted parents, but they turn her away. Sophie and Baby Jimmy return to live with the Ramirez family. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sparks an orgy of patriotic fervor in the ghetto. Jimmy reappears, and there is a happy family reunion until brother Victor announces that he is planning to enlist. The two brothers argue, and Jimmy hurries off with Sophie and the baby.

The following summer, Nilda is again sent to camp, but this time it is to Bard Manor, a nondenominational camp where the counselors emphasize kindness and cooperation. While there, she discovers a “secret garden” in the woods, where the flowers remind her of her mother’s descriptions of Puerto Rico.

Back home, Nilda’s stepfather’s condition worsens. After his death, Nilda’s mother insists upon a big, Catholic funeral, during which Nilda wonders whether her stepfather might actually rise up from the coffin to inveigh against the religion he hated so much in life.

Tragedy strikes Nilda’s life again, when two of her friends are beaten by the police and her brother Jimmy is arrested for drug dealing and sent to the federal penitentiary. Finally, her best friend becomes pregnant and her closest brother, Paul, enlists in the Navy. When the war ends, Nilda looks forward to seeing her brothers again, but then her mother becomes fatally ill. As Nilda pays her a final visit in the hospital, Mama urges her to stay in school and pursue her art.

After her mother dies, Nilda is told she will live with her Aunt Rosario. Though Nilda is still grieving, the book ends with a scene in which she shows her admiring cousin Claudia the sketches she once drew at Bard Manor: The “secret garden” in the woods will belong to Nilda as long as she has her art and the memory of her mother’s love.

Context

Nilda was Nicholasa Mohr’s first literary work for adolescents and was followed by two children’s novels, Felita (1979) and Going Home (1986); a collection of short stories, El Bronx Remembered (1975); and a series of vignettes of Puerto Rican life, In Nueva York (1977). The themes articulated in Nilda resurface in these other works: the meaning and importance of family in a minority culture, the quest to define one’s identity, and the tensions that arise for the heroines between their Puerto Rican heritage and their identification with the mainstream culture of New York. Both Felita and Nilda experience life outside the barrio. For Nilda, at Bard Manor Camp, the experience is a happy one; for Felita, the family’s move to a “better” white neighborhood brings loneliness and unhappiness and eventually leads them to return to the barrio. In each case, the Mohr heroine must come to terms with her Puerto Rican identity, and must find a way to be true to herself, her friends, and her artistic creativity.

On a broader level, Nilda belongs in the great tradition of Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers (1925), Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1934), and Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)—urban autobiographical ethnic novels of childhood and adolescence in which, despite the odds, the protagonists survive with a vision of something better for themselves and their world.

Critics who praised Nilda, which won The New York Times Outstanding Books Award in Juvenile Fiction for 1973, called attention to Mohr’s vivid and uncompromising descriptions of the harsh realities of ghetto life. Like the other novels mentioned above, Nilda is more than the sum of its parts. Though it is filled with tragedy and violence, it is not a depressing novel. There are moments of humor along with the tragedy. Most of all, Nilda is a delightful heroine: bright, curious, and energetic. Her honesty, courage, and charm make her a fine antidote to the stereotype of the urban ethnic child as victim.