HBO Max’s “Gordita Chronicles” screen stars Olivia Goncalves as Cucu, a 12-year-old girl whose memories tell audiences she grew up in the 1980s in Miami in an immigrant family. The screen, which is composed of integrating and locating one’s position in the world, goes beyond the Latin culture it represents.
“Gordita Chronicles” is a sweet and fair display on how to integrate and locate your position in the world.
But for many of us, it’s a bit like going home, rummaging through the bedroom closet of our formative years, and finding a big box of school souvenirs. This is true for those of us who have enjoyed immigration. Or that they came of age in the 1980s. Or that they were chubby.
The show, which premiered June 23 on HBO Max, is a sitcom about the circle of relatives about the Castelli clan, a circle of 4 relatives who moved to Miami from the Dominican Republic. Cucu, the chubby 12-year-old whose memories the viewer tells how a member of her circle of relatives struggled in his own way with the demanding situations of being a newcomer, uses the pastel colors, bracelets and side ponytails that we all wear when we watched to watch as the women in “Saved by the Bell” still looked more like the women in the evening novel.
In one episode, Cucu’s father is frustrated because his boss mistakes him for the other Latino in construction: the caretaker. In another, Cucu makes big plans for his first Halloween party in the United States, but is frustrated by the arrival of his Dominican grandmother. And an episode in which Cucu’s mother discovers that in the United States even the behavior is different. The intrigues were so close to home that I found myself calling La Jefita and shouting, “It WASN’t just us!”
Along the way, “Gordita Chronicles” also tackles anything else: our differences from classic America. The use of the word “chubby” in the name is very good because, among us, chubby is an affectionate term, not a label meant to belittle or mock. Cucu’s name, her use of Spanglish, and her preference for integrating, combined with her preference for being herself, are elements of the immigrant experience and, therefore, of the American experience.
The fact is, so many Americans have no idea about those demanding situations because they still don’t know who we are. knowing what it means. Many other people do not perceive us because they only see the differences and lose all sense of the common. But, going back to the 1980s and employing pieces of American history that we all have in common, showing them to the audience in living rooms across America that immigrants have stood shoulder to shoulder with the mainstream.
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