Nair Naysayer

Coming from a Puerto Rican family, raised in a predominantly Cuban atmosphere (my uncle married into a Cuban family) and having lived in Miami during the Mariel boat lift, please allow me to correct a few of the glaring misrepresentations I noticed in “Perez Family” director Mira Nair’s comments (“Miami Masala,” by Patrick Goldstein, May 7).

One, all Cuban women are not short, fat-assed, saucy tomatoes. They don’t parade around in poufy red dresses with mounds of unkempt curly hair while stalking for a husband. Two, while Cuban dancing is quite beautiful and sexy, the sexiness comes from the formal moves, and not from blatant hip-grinding. Finally, one glance at actual footage of the refugees entering the country would tell her that these were oppressed people leaving a poor and sometimes dangerous country. They were not a bunch of cha-chas singing and dancing while wearing the colors of the American flag. How Stepin Fetchit can you get?

I find it hard to believe that if Wayne Wang had cast Marisa Tomei over Ming Na Wen in the lead role of “The Joy Luck Club,” then justified it in so insulting a way as Nair did in the article, that Calendar would have accepted it as “the bitter truth . . . that even in the world of independent film, star talent is a marketing priority.” It needn’t be. If the movie couldn’t be made with some semblance of honesty it shouldn’t have been made. Stop insulting us by giving us such vulgar portrayals of our culture.

My only hope is that “My Family” surpasses “The Perez Family” in box-office receipts, then maybe Hollywood will understand what I am saying.

DINA DEL VALLE

Culver City

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Whoa. I couldn’t let Marcia Del Mar’s May 14 letter pass without comment. “La Bamba” was a hit because it had “an all-Latino cast”? As in star Lou Diamond Phillips? Whose mother is Filippino/Chinese and whose father is Scots/Cherokee? Try again.

ETHLIE ANN VARE

Beverly Hills