Born in 1997: The Social Connection Builder
Making Friends Across the World
Born in 1997? Then you remember sending forty nudges a night, counting the notes on a post you made at fourteen, and the family group chat where everybody finally wrote "bendición" in the same place.
The story
Arroz con leche, me quiero casar. Natalia's grandmother sang it to her over the phone every night at eight o'clock for six years, from a kitchen in the mountains of Utuado to a cordless phone in Bayamon.
Born in 1997: The Social Connection Builder is a first-person life story of a girl born in August 1997 in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Her father is a government clerk. Her mother is a pharmacy technician. Her grandparents farm coffee in the hills, and her brother Javier sets up her first MSN account on the family computer. Nati grows up with a family that lives on the island and far from it, and the book is told through the screens that kept them together.
There is a Monday in 2006 when the government closes and her father comes home with his tie in his pocket. There is a first contact list with nine people on it, a Tumblr fandom with a friend in Seoul, and a WhatsApp group created the night her brother leaves for Orlando. There are cousins in a group called Primas, a student assembly, and the days after Hurricane Maria, when generators hum all night. A job as a theater usher, a summer of protest in 2019, a quake at 4:24 in the morning, and a graduation by Zoom follow.
She ends up working in a strip-mall office in Kissimmee, and at last on a porch with her grandmother, while the family tunes in from everywhere for a ninetieth birthday.
Chapter titles come from the names of the groups and places in the story, from Contactos to Familia to Luz Ya. A timeline of 1997, famous people born that year, and a look at what the year means in other cultures are included at the back.
It makes a heartfelt gift for anyone who grew up with family on the screen.
A few things that happened in 1997
- 1997-01-20 — Bill Clinton is sworn in for his second term
- 1997-02-22 — Scottish scientists announce Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell
- 1997-04-13 — Tiger Woods, 21, wins the Masters by a record 12 strokes
- 1997-05-11 — IBM's Deep Blue computer beats world chess champion Garry Kasparov
- 1997-06-26 — Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is published in Britain
Also born in 1997
- Malala Yousafzai — Education activist; at 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in 2014
- Simone Biles — Gymnast; seven Olympic gold medals and the most decorated gymnast in world championship history
- Naomi Osaka — Tennis player; four Grand Slam singles titles and the first Asian player ranked No. 1 in singles
- Marcus Rashford — Soccer forward; Manchester United and England, also known for his campaign for free school meals
- Kylie Jenner — Media personality and entrepreneur; founded Kylie Cosmetics