Summary

“Blue Boy, White Boy” began on the October morning in 1910 that an abandoned infant, Simonopio, was discovered under a bridge. People wondered how Nana Reja, elderly and usually stationary in her rocking chair on La Amistad, could have heard the infant’s faint cries when others could not.

Nana Reja kept her eyes closed as she gently rocked. Although she could not remember the faces of her childhood, including her own child, Nana Reja could remember how her body felt when impregnated and suckling. As a young woman, Nana Reja ventured from the sierras to Linares for the first time to find help for her sick baby. The doctor who happened upon her in the cold brought her to the Morales family to suckle a motherless child. She formed a deep emotional bond with the infant, Guillermo Morales, and...