I have often been asked how I came up with the title for my documentary on the Cape Verdean community in the Fox Point section of Providence, Rhode Island where I was born and raised. The “Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican?”, is derived from an actual comment made many, many years ago. My beau’s brother was a student at Brown University in Providence, RI. Upon learning that his brother had met a Cape Verdean girl from Providence, the Brown student replied, “Cape Verdean? Oh, there are a lot of them around here; they’re some kind of funny “Porto Ricans.” (Note: spelling of “Porto” is the way it was pronounced, hence the spelling in the title). This is a classic example of the (mis)perceptions of Cape Verdean Americans.

The search for visual material for this project has been an ongoing hunt for over twenty years.I have gone door to door, following leads of family and friends: sometimes crawling through basements and attics, and in one instance prying 8mm black and white footage of Brava, Cape Verde in the l950s from a reluctant cousin’s attic. Through a more cooperative uncle, I was given the use of his 8mm family archive spanning thirty years of family events and holidays. Other finds include priceless photographs, many going back to the late 1890s, journals, newspaper clippings and a pristine collection of beautiful 8mm color film of the Fox Point community in the late l950s and l960s and of the longshoremen “working the boats” in the Port of Providence and 8mm footage of the famed ERNESTINA, a two-master Gloucester schooner, the last packet ship to regularly sail to New England, and a legend in Cape Verdean folklore.

Another highlight is the voices from the oral histories with the “old-timers” I have conducted over the years. Now that many are deceased, their voices are an even more valuable part of this story. SKFPR does not attempt to be the definitive word on the “Cape Verdean” experience. What the project endeavours to do is to tell a story that is rich in human experience and scholarly detail and give primacy to first voice narrative.