Cape Verdean Creole

been fueled by the recent inflow of Brazilian immigrants. Cape Verde is an archipelago of nine islands off the coast of West Africa. From their settlement by Portuguese sailors in the late 15th century until 1975, the islands were a Portuguese colony. Large-scale migration to Massachusetts and Rhode Island started in the 1800s, when Azoreans and Cape Verdeans migrated to New Bedford to work in the whaling industry (Halter, 1993). Cape Verdeans remained in the region and worked in the cranberry…

To be Cape Verdean is not simply to have Cape Verdean blood within you, rather it is also to have a certain amount of pride and respect for our ethnicity and culture. In saying this, my Cape Verdean heritage doesn’t just mean something to me, but rather it is me. It is everything that is embodied within me and what I do. From birth, I was raised by a strong Cape Verdean family filled with hard working women and men. Not only were they hard working, but as I grew up, they instilled in me the…