House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel) addresses the chamber after being elected the first Afro-Latina presiding officer in the history of the Maryland General Assembly — a far cry from her childhood in poverty in the Dominican Republic. (Photo Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
When she was a small child growing up in her native Dominican Republic, Joseline Peña-Melnyk would frequently return home from school at midday to find a house packed with relatives, but not a morsel of food.
The Peña family’s home was “tiny,” she recalls, a one-bedroom wooden structure with holes in the roof and a latrine in the yard. She frequently lived with as many as 17 aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. They were too embarrassed to ask the proprietor of the local bodega for food on credit…