Six more clips from the John Jay panel on the Librotraficante movement and the Tucson banned book issue. The clips are from founders Tony Diaz, Bryan Parras, and Liana Lopez. They have a thriving organization for Latino literature (hey, I like em already!) in Houston, TX, called Nuestra Palabra. Check them out, and check out the clips below.
Because the word "literati" sounds sorta Spanish.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
We Are All Librotraficantes: On the Banning of Books in Tucson, Arizona
This past Saturday, I was privileged to take part in a panel at John Jay College addressing the ban on Mexican-American Studies in Tucson, Arizona. Over 80 books, the vast majority of which are books by Latina/o authors, are now effectively banned in the Tucson school district.
With me at the panel were the novelist Sergio Troncoso, whose book The Last Tortilla and Other Stories is on Tucson's banned list; as well as the members of a remarkable movement called Librotraficante, which has sprung up within the last month to combat these bans. Professor Tony Diaz of the University of Houston, and radio producers and hosts Bryan Parras and Liana Lopez, have come together to create a caravan of banned books that are slated to be trafficked BACK into Arizona from Texas, into four (at last count) underground libraries which will exist to celebrate, and provide students and the public with access to, the sacred literature which Tucson now wishes to toss into the incinerator.
Anyone with interest in combatting this genocidal action by the Tucson school district should visit Librotraficante on the web, where you can contribute to the caravan, contact the organizers, and find ways to make your voice known.
Make no mistake: facism is alive and well, and the State of Arizona harbors it. We have not forgotten SB 1070. And we will not forget this. Unless we step up now to combat facism, it will bubble the surface elsewhere, like a bad memory. (It already has.) Do not stand still now.
In the meantime, have a look at two clips from Saturday's panel discussion, from myself and from Sergio. I will post more clips as they become available.
A big word of thanks to the intrepid Erasmo Guerra, who was on hand to document the event and who posted these clips to YouTube.
With me at the panel were the novelist Sergio Troncoso, whose book The Last Tortilla and Other Stories is on Tucson's banned list; as well as the members of a remarkable movement called Librotraficante, which has sprung up within the last month to combat these bans. Professor Tony Diaz of the University of Houston, and radio producers and hosts Bryan Parras and Liana Lopez, have come together to create a caravan of banned books that are slated to be trafficked BACK into Arizona from Texas, into four (at last count) underground libraries which will exist to celebrate, and provide students and the public with access to, the sacred literature which Tucson now wishes to toss into the incinerator.
Anyone with interest in combatting this genocidal action by the Tucson school district should visit Librotraficante on the web, where you can contribute to the caravan, contact the organizers, and find ways to make your voice known.
Make no mistake: facism is alive and well, and the State of Arizona harbors it. We have not forgotten SB 1070. And we will not forget this. Unless we step up now to combat facism, it will bubble the surface elsewhere, like a bad memory. (It already has.) Do not stand still now.
In the meantime, have a look at two clips from Saturday's panel discussion, from myself and from Sergio. I will post more clips as they become available.
A big word of thanks to the intrepid Erasmo Guerra, who was on hand to document the event and who posted these clips to YouTube.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Homecoming.
I have a thing for the moon.
I used to do this trip quite a bit when I was a baby poet. I used to think I'd finally gotten my city dweller card when I made it down there without an automobile. Tarrytown Metro-North train to Grand Central. Cross to the 4 train, one stop to Union Square. Forget where the carajo I'm going. End up on 4th Avenue. Lose sense of direction. Curse self. Wonder what those scrolling numbers on the building mean. One block over to University Place. One block down to 13th Street. Stop at slamming pizza joint. Eat slamming pizza. Over to 35 E. 13th Street. Climb 37,189 steps to Bar 13. Easy!
There was a waxing crescent moon in the sky last night, which means it is approaching full. Apt metaphor for me as I stepped out of the subway in Union Square yesterday, this time in the correct spot, gathering my strength. That moon had followed me all the way down the Hudson Valley outside the train window, I was certain. Just as certain as it followed me on the walk from my car to my apartment in East Orange, New Jersey. Or Paterson. Or Highland Park, when I was three. I sat at a bench, fully 45 minutes early for the festivities, and put my head back, and closed my eyes. Years before this, I'd be sweaty and disorganized, worrying about what I was going to read, shuffling the papers in my bag until I found the right order of poems. I still get nervous, but the shakes come much earlier now, so I am able to be present, and calm, when the reading approaches.
Ten minutes on the bench, and the dude next to me taps me on the shoulder. He is, apparently, a person who saw me host a reading with Rosa Alcala at McNally Jackson books, which means I'm probably now the second writer from Paterson he has met in person. Kudos are given for my insightful questions. I invite him to my reading, and get a big thumbs up in response. Awesome! Do you, man! That's wonderful! What are the odds, I wonder. Maybe that's what the giant numbers on the building are calculating. Fully convinced that I am the king of New York—and fully aware that Union Square doesn't give a shit—I get up and step away to East 13th.
Thirty thousand steps later, and I am at the doorway of the place that nurtured my earliest urges to curse out rappers who worship Che Guevara. I was still in my twenties when I started. I was alive, but rife with insecurities. Almost too alive. In 2004, when I briefly considered the prospect of doing harm to myself, I did so because the poems, and all the self-examination they entailed, made me feel a sense of hyper-awareness that no one told me to be ready for. My ears, my eyes, my skin, were all turned up to maximum volume. I could hear and taste every extra syllable and salt particle. It was both unbearable, and exhilarating.
Since 2003, this was my epicenter: a bar near NYU, usually well-attended, even on Monday, and almost always full of the poets I'd either seen on HBO or the previous Friday at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe. Other spaces would follow for me. But it was the Monday night reading that set me on the path to perdition, and it is always the moon that leads me.
I am feeling alive as I enter the room. Only, beautifully, alive. I am not on edge, or breathing heavily, or noticably sweating. And I am divorced, a fact that several friends had not known about until the awkward question. I handled it with far more grace than I would have been capable of in October, another fact of my life, relatively simple. I did not drink, though I know I could have. I did not sit, because that was never my habit before a reading. There were new friends present, and all of them knew the words to Nadie Como Ella. My old friends loved me newly. And I was in love with the moon, like I always was, and for the first time in years, I used that voice to speak.
What did I read? Poems, of course. What else do you do when you're home?
I used to do this trip quite a bit when I was a baby poet. I used to think I'd finally gotten my city dweller card when I made it down there without an automobile. Tarrytown Metro-North train to Grand Central. Cross to the 4 train, one stop to Union Square. Forget where the carajo I'm going. End up on 4th Avenue. Lose sense of direction. Curse self. Wonder what those scrolling numbers on the building mean. One block over to University Place. One block down to 13th Street. Stop at slamming pizza joint. Eat slamming pizza. Over to 35 E. 13th Street. Climb 37,189 steps to Bar 13. Easy!
There was a waxing crescent moon in the sky last night, which means it is approaching full. Apt metaphor for me as I stepped out of the subway in Union Square yesterday, this time in the correct spot, gathering my strength. That moon had followed me all the way down the Hudson Valley outside the train window, I was certain. Just as certain as it followed me on the walk from my car to my apartment in East Orange, New Jersey. Or Paterson. Or Highland Park, when I was three. I sat at a bench, fully 45 minutes early for the festivities, and put my head back, and closed my eyes. Years before this, I'd be sweaty and disorganized, worrying about what I was going to read, shuffling the papers in my bag until I found the right order of poems. I still get nervous, but the shakes come much earlier now, so I am able to be present, and calm, when the reading approaches.
Ten minutes on the bench, and the dude next to me taps me on the shoulder. He is, apparently, a person who saw me host a reading with Rosa Alcala at McNally Jackson books, which means I'm probably now the second writer from Paterson he has met in person. Kudos are given for my insightful questions. I invite him to my reading, and get a big thumbs up in response. Awesome! Do you, man! That's wonderful! What are the odds, I wonder. Maybe that's what the giant numbers on the building are calculating. Fully convinced that I am the king of New York—and fully aware that Union Square doesn't give a shit—I get up and step away to East 13th.
Thirty thousand steps later, and I am at the doorway of the place that nurtured my earliest urges to curse out rappers who worship Che Guevara. I was still in my twenties when I started. I was alive, but rife with insecurities. Almost too alive. In 2004, when I briefly considered the prospect of doing harm to myself, I did so because the poems, and all the self-examination they entailed, made me feel a sense of hyper-awareness that no one told me to be ready for. My ears, my eyes, my skin, were all turned up to maximum volume. I could hear and taste every extra syllable and salt particle. It was both unbearable, and exhilarating.
Since 2003, this was my epicenter: a bar near NYU, usually well-attended, even on Monday, and almost always full of the poets I'd either seen on HBO or the previous Friday at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe. Other spaces would follow for me. But it was the Monday night reading that set me on the path to perdition, and it is always the moon that leads me.
I am feeling alive as I enter the room. Only, beautifully, alive. I am not on edge, or breathing heavily, or noticably sweating. And I am divorced, a fact that several friends had not known about until the awkward question. I handled it with far more grace than I would have been capable of in October, another fact of my life, relatively simple. I did not drink, though I know I could have. I did not sit, because that was never my habit before a reading. There were new friends present, and all of them knew the words to Nadie Como Ella. My old friends loved me newly. And I was in love with the moon, like I always was, and for the first time in years, I used that voice to speak.
What did I read? Poems, of course. What else do you do when you're home?
New.
Many things are new in my life these days. This blog is new. We'll start here.
This poem first appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Thanks to editor Francisco Aragon for including it in the journal's Floricanto issue.
I am thinking today of Tucson, my family, and the various loves of my life. Enjoy. Tonight, there will be more to say.
Always Here
lacking a proper entrance
into a poem
about Arizona Senate Bill 1070
prompts me instead
to tell you
about the flamboyanes blooming
in Doña Yeya's mouth
every time she speaks
about her children,
or the pasteles that do not
wrap themselves
until blood is offered to the masa,
or the boys she sent to Germany,
who came back headless
and quoting Bible verses
or the girls
with thirteen years of bruises
at the hands of those same boys
who were told asi es la vida
without the slightest sense of irony
who shouldered Nuyorican babies
dutifully to Bayamón
dreaming about a nation
under which they cannot
legally claim citizenship
or parrandas of gold stomping
flat the Jersey snow
forgetting that coquito never meant
cold weather
or the act of forgetting
beneath every aguinaldo,
because civil cafesito
and politics cannot coexist
and we do not question
our birth certificates
unless we are agents of Homeland Security
because we were born American citizens
and as such are eligible to die
at a higher rate
in exchange for houses in Orlando
that we do not own.
There are Puerto Ricans
in Arizona and New York and Nebraska and,
I promise you,
good gente, it makes no difference
if your grandmother conjures
Michoacan or Mayaguez
in her flowered breath, it makes
no difference
if you bless the four winds
or pray to San Juan Bautista,
to those who only see papers
and brown flesh, who cannot
locate your cities on the maps
of conquerors or conquered,
you are a threat,
and if this is the case,
gente, I say,
be a threat. Unquieted,
bloom where you are not permitted
to bloom. Disjointed,
walk anywhere you please, stumble
if you must, but be present.
And when they ask you
where you keep your company,
tell them here, here,
always here.
This poem first appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Thanks to editor Francisco Aragon for including it in the journal's Floricanto issue.
I am thinking today of Tucson, my family, and the various loves of my life. Enjoy. Tonight, there will be more to say.
Always Here
lacking a proper entrance
into a poem
about Arizona Senate Bill 1070
prompts me instead
to tell you
about the flamboyanes blooming
in Doña Yeya's mouth
every time she speaks
about her children,
or the pasteles that do not
wrap themselves
until blood is offered to the masa,
or the boys she sent to Germany,
who came back headless
and quoting Bible verses
or the girls
with thirteen years of bruises
at the hands of those same boys
who were told asi es la vida
without the slightest sense of irony
who shouldered Nuyorican babies
dutifully to Bayamón
dreaming about a nation
under which they cannot
legally claim citizenship
or parrandas of gold stomping
flat the Jersey snow
forgetting that coquito never meant
cold weather
or the act of forgetting
beneath every aguinaldo,
because civil cafesito
and politics cannot coexist
and we do not question
our birth certificates
unless we are agents of Homeland Security
because we were born American citizens
and as such are eligible to die
at a higher rate
in exchange for houses in Orlando
that we do not own.
There are Puerto Ricans
in Arizona and New York and Nebraska and,
I promise you,
good gente, it makes no difference
if your grandmother conjures
Michoacan or Mayaguez
in her flowered breath, it makes
no difference
if you bless the four winds
or pray to San Juan Bautista,
to those who only see papers
and brown flesh, who cannot
locate your cities on the maps
of conquerors or conquered,
you are a threat,
and if this is the case,
gente, I say,
be a threat. Unquieted,
bloom where you are not permitted
to bloom. Disjointed,
walk anywhere you please, stumble
if you must, but be present.
And when they ask you
where you keep your company,
tell them here, here,
always here.
Monday, June 6, 2011
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: An Anthology of Latino/a Literature from 2003-Present
Please forward this note to all relevant parties.
June 4, 2011
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Acentos is a community-based organization fostering audiences for Latino/a literature through the discussion, promotion, teaching, performance, and publication of work by Latino and Latina writers. In our various incarnations, we have been a reading series, an online journal, and a poetry workshop.
We will be recording this work in an as-yet-untitled anthology chronicling nearly a decade of our efforts to highlight and develop Latino and Latina writing, without translation or apology, from our homes in the South Bronx.
This book will document the history of the organization and showcase the depth of Latino poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in the years since Acentos was founded. The writers represented in the archive of Acentos participants—in its readings, workshops, and public events—represent the deepest possible cross-section of genres, styles, and ethnicities; from the academic to the non-academic; from text to ear to all schools of Latino and Latina writers. This book will seek to complicate and deepen the narratives that make up the labels Latino and Latina literature; it will provide an alternative piece of scholarship for students and teachers of literature to (re)consider the American literary canon; and it will remind its readers that pan-Latino/a identity and solidarity in the literary world and the world at large has a home in the South Bronx. In Acentos.
If you have been a featured reader for the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase from 2003 to the present, if you have written poetry in the Acentos Writers' Workshops, if you have been a participant on an Acentos reading or panel, or if you have been published in The Acentos Review, we invite you to send your work to the editors, Rich Villar and Oscar Bermeo, at the email address acentosanthology@gmail.com.
Deadline for all submissions is August 31, 2011.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
-For your work to be considered for publication, you must have a) been a featured reader at the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase between 2003 and the present; b) published work in The Acentos Review; c) attended at least four sessions of the Acentos Writers' Workshops or been a fellow in one of its two intensive workshops, OR d) been a participant in a public reading or panel sponsored by Acentos.
-Your cover letter is the body of the email you use to submit work. In it, please indicate where you fall in the above rubric.
-All submissions must be emailed, submitted as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .pdf formats only.
-In the subject line, please indicate the genre you are submitting to, followed by a comma, followed by your full name. (Example: POETRY, John Doe)
-Submissions in multiple genres are okay, BUT please send your submissions to each genre in separate emails.
-Please include your name, snail mail address, email address, and daytime telephone number on the header of each page of the submission, and number each page.
-Though we definitely prefer unpublished work, we will consider previously published work, as outlined below:
FOR POETRY: Three to five poems in a manuscript no more than ten (10) pages in length. Poems submitted may either be unpublished poems, or poems previously published with the Acentos Review, or work published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
FOR FICTION: One or two pieces, 500-7500 words in length. Pieces may either be unpublished pieces, or pieces previously published with the Acentos Review, or pieces published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
FOR NONFICTION: One or two pieces, 500-2000 words in length. Pieces may either be unpublished pieces, or pieces previously published with the Acentos Review, or pieces published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
Thank you all in advance for your time and talent, and we look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the editors anytime at acentosanthology@gmail.com.
Saludos,
Rich Villar and Oscar Bermeo
Editors
June 4, 2011
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Acentos is a community-based organization fostering audiences for Latino/a literature through the discussion, promotion, teaching, performance, and publication of work by Latino and Latina writers. In our various incarnations, we have been a reading series, an online journal, and a poetry workshop.
We will be recording this work in an as-yet-untitled anthology chronicling nearly a decade of our efforts to highlight and develop Latino and Latina writing, without translation or apology, from our homes in the South Bronx.
This book will document the history of the organization and showcase the depth of Latino poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in the years since Acentos was founded. The writers represented in the archive of Acentos participants—in its readings, workshops, and public events—represent the deepest possible cross-section of genres, styles, and ethnicities; from the academic to the non-academic; from text to ear to all schools of Latino and Latina writers. This book will seek to complicate and deepen the narratives that make up the labels Latino and Latina literature; it will provide an alternative piece of scholarship for students and teachers of literature to (re)consider the American literary canon; and it will remind its readers that pan-Latino/a identity and solidarity in the literary world and the world at large has a home in the South Bronx. In Acentos.
If you have been a featured reader for the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase from 2003 to the present, if you have written poetry in the Acentos Writers' Workshops, if you have been a participant on an Acentos reading or panel, or if you have been published in The Acentos Review, we invite you to send your work to the editors, Rich Villar and Oscar Bermeo, at the email address acentosanthology@gmail.com.
Deadline for all submissions is August 31, 2011.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
-For your work to be considered for publication, you must have a) been a featured reader at the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase between 2003 and the present; b) published work in The Acentos Review; c) attended at least four sessions of the Acentos Writers' Workshops or been a fellow in one of its two intensive workshops, OR d) been a participant in a public reading or panel sponsored by Acentos.
-Your cover letter is the body of the email you use to submit work. In it, please indicate where you fall in the above rubric.
-All submissions must be emailed, submitted as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .pdf formats only.
-In the subject line, please indicate the genre you are submitting to, followed by a comma, followed by your full name. (Example: POETRY, John Doe)
-Submissions in multiple genres are okay, BUT please send your submissions to each genre in separate emails.
-Please include your name, snail mail address, email address, and daytime telephone number on the header of each page of the submission, and number each page.
-Though we definitely prefer unpublished work, we will consider previously published work, as outlined below:
FOR POETRY: Three to five poems in a manuscript no more than ten (10) pages in length. Poems submitted may either be unpublished poems, or poems previously published with the Acentos Review, or work published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
FOR FICTION: One or two pieces, 500-7500 words in length. Pieces may either be unpublished pieces, or pieces previously published with the Acentos Review, or pieces published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
FOR NONFICTION: One or two pieces, 500-2000 words in length. Pieces may either be unpublished pieces, or pieces previously published with the Acentos Review, or pieces published within the last two years from the date of this call, properly attributed.
Thank you all in advance for your time and talent, and we look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the editors anytime at acentosanthology@gmail.com.
Saludos,
Rich Villar and Oscar Bermeo
Editors
Saturday, March 5, 2011
"Latino Studies" in Radius...
My thanks to Victor Infante and Lea Deschenes, editors of an excellent new online journal called Radius, which has published my poem "Latino Studies" alongside poetry by Willie Perdomo and Sean Dalpiaz.
This post highlights my work, the work of a mentor (Willie), and the work of one who is considered "emerging" (Sean). Not having published a book yet, I feel a bit like the emerging poet myself, so this is actually a neat little privilege to have my work mentioned here. And I actually sound halfway intelligent in it, so that's a plus.
It's been an interesting few weeks and months for me, one that has gotten a fire lit under me to put the work out in the world and be visible. It's easy to drop away when the only work you're known for is your 9-to-5. And even that's not all it's cracked up to be, especially when you live in a state where your governor is hostile to educators and nonprofits alike. I need to go tell a little truth once in a while, and have people listen. For that, I'm grateful to the editors for letting me out of my cage.
More projects on the horizon. More. Feeling really good, people.
This post highlights my work, the work of a mentor (Willie), and the work of one who is considered "emerging" (Sean). Not having published a book yet, I feel a bit like the emerging poet myself, so this is actually a neat little privilege to have my work mentioned here. And I actually sound halfway intelligent in it, so that's a plus.
It's been an interesting few weeks and months for me, one that has gotten a fire lit under me to put the work out in the world and be visible. It's easy to drop away when the only work you're known for is your 9-to-5. And even that's not all it's cracked up to be, especially when you live in a state where your governor is hostile to educators and nonprofits alike. I need to go tell a little truth once in a while, and have people listen. For that, I'm grateful to the editors for letting me out of my cage.
More projects on the horizon. More. Feeling really good, people.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Rich's Panel Presentation at AWP 2011
PRESENTED AT AWP 2011: Poets/Editors on Race and Inclusivity.
Poet/editors discuss inclusiveness (and lack thereof) of minority voices in literary publications. Representing both mainstream and more community-based projects, the panelists consider the challenges of inclusiveness, and how successful (and unsuccessful) they have been. They consider how, in an atmosphere of perceived mistrust, constructive dialogue can be forged towards the goal of better presenting the broad spectrum of American poetry.
*************************
In racking my brains for a systemic way to approach this topic, I heeded some good advice and simply went back to the panel description.
POET/EDITORS DISCUSS INCLUSIVENESS (AND LACK THEREOF) OF MINORITY VOICES IN LITERARY PUBLICATIONS.
In all fairness, it is hardly accurate to call me a poet/editor. I've been the fiction editor for The Acentos Review for a comparatively short time. I have been a poet, though. So I feel more comfortable speaking, for the most part, about my voice as a Latino poet, and where I fit in this sentence. The question for me is, am I a minority voice? If we're talking in terms of ethnicity, here is the tale of the tape: I am Puerto Rican and Cuban, identified with the African diaspora, born in Edison, New Jersey, and despite tea party protestations to the contrary, a natural-born American citizen. Where I grew up in Paterson, NJ, the majority was Black and Latino. To be more specific—African-American, West African, Jamaican, Boricua, Dominicano, Cubano, Peruvian, Colombian, Guatemalan. But, not by much. Paterson is also home to one of the largest Palestinean and Syrian communities in the United States. Still, until the advent of round-the-clock Dunkin' Donuts, my favorite place to acquire cappucino was at an Italian storefront called Cafe Capriccio on 21st Street, run by a tiny Italian man who apparently sold nothing but the stuff. I don't know if I can rightly call myself a minority voice, but Paterson taught me that I am one voice out of many kinds.
In terms of influence. I drop my coin, of course, in the fountain of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. I also would have said Mark Doty straightaway, except that Mark was kind enough to point out to me at a reading once that he gets HIS penchant for exacting, revelatory detail from Elizabeth Bishop. So there's Doty, and there's Bishop. I would trace my fearlessness with vernacular speech and code-switching—that is, my right to use it as I see fit—to Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Willie Perdomo. And I am unafraid to mention my cultures, my politics—in other words, my specific stories, the ones only I can tell—because of the examples of Martín Espada and Sandra Cisneros. And the fact that I am a writer at all can be traced to where I started: the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, the louderARTS reading series at Bar 13, the Acentos Poetry Showcase in the Bronx. Not exactly the MFA system. And that's where the picture gets interesting for me.
While my identity as a Latino, or as a writer, or as an American, has never been in doubt for me, I have engaged in some very creative accounting as it relates to my identities in the literary world. By literary world, I mean the conglomeration of presses, literary foundations, Universities, organizations, editors, journals...basically, anyone that you could conceivably submit a cover letter to, or that asks you to write a bio. My bio studiously hid my experience in the spoken word and slam worlds, and for good reason, I thought: because editors look at slam and spoken word in someone's bio and immediately turn into pillars of salt. I wish I could chalk this up to simple paranoia on my part, except that I began hearing first-hand anecdotes about how true it was. Not so much the salt pillars, but how panelists for foundational awards tended not to even read the manuscripts from spoken word writers, or how anthologies would make mention of slam and spoken word, but not publish the work itself because it is built for the stage. Even now, anthologies containing these so-called spoken word or slam writers get published with the words "warrior," "revolution" and "outlaw" alongside them, or with the stated need to Bum Rush the Page, or Take the Mic.
If you're thinking to yourself what this has to do with race or ethnicity, consider for a moment this partial list of foundational writers for much of what we call spoken word and slam: The Last Poets, Gil-Scott Heron, Sekou Sundiata, the writers of Nuyorican movement including Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero and Sandra María Esteves; Patricia Smith, Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore. And I found myself surrounded by black and Latino writers in the slam scenes of NYC: Roger Bonair-Agard, Lynne Procope, the aforementioned Patricia Smith, Edward Garcia, Willie Perdomo, Miguel Algarín, and the 150 or so nationally-known and ethnically diverse Latino writers that have passed through Acentos, the reading series I curated in the Bronx. Not to mention the numerous and multiplying Cave Canem fellows who live and write in the New York area. All this to say, the idea that there were writers of my ilk, my ethnicity, my races, my familia, that somehow felt left out of the American canon, or out of certain anthologies and journals, or who felt mistrust toward anyone because they were marginalized, was not only foreign to me, but infuriating.
Yet, the one common thread I can link all of these writers to is a phenomenon I call Table of Contents Anxiety. This is not an affliction, to my knowledge, that is suffered by Anglo writers. (I will happily stand corrected if need be.) Table of Contents Anxiety arises when the first reaction to holding a new journal or anthology in your hands, before you even read one line of literature, is to flip open the Table of Contents and quickly scan it for black folks, or Latinos, or Native Americans, or anything, ANYTHING, besides the usual Smorgasboard of the Unsurprising when it comes to editors and their lists. I know I am not alone in this TOC Anxiety. I know some of you in this room suffer in silence. I know some of you in this room haven't shut up about it since the 1970's. However you deal with your particular anxiety, know that is it very real, and it goes to the heart of this perceived mistrust within the literary community, and definitely contributes to my presence here today.
REPRESENTING BOTH MAINSTREAM AND MORE COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECTS, THE PANELISTS CONSIDER THE CHALLENGES OF INCLUSIVENESS, AND HOW SUCCESSFUL (AND UNSUCCESSFUL) THEY HAVE BEEN.
Please understand that all the original panelists had a hand in crafting this panel description. This part, however, escaped my notice until I started considering how, among slam poets, self-sabotage often contributes to isolation. What I do isn't poetry, they'll say. Well, who's to say? And similarly, who's to say what I do at the Acentos Review isn't mainstream? And considering that we've gotten submissions from as far away as Brazil, that we have published an interview with Ana Castillo, that we seek out new writers with as much aplomb as we accept established writers, I'd say we've been pretty successful at what we do. But we're not mainstream. CAVEAT: We only publish Latinos. Well. Maybe that makes us community-based. Maybe that makes elena minor's PALABRA journal community-based. Because Latino equals community. Because Latino does not equal mainstream.
So what's mainstream to a poet? Well. If I were an alien to this planet (tea partiers be damned), I might look to relatively large, well-paid entities with ambitious titles like The Poetry Foundation, or Poetry magazine, or The Poetry Society of America. And until recently, I would have been hard-pressed to find nary a Latino within their published works. To that end, for what progress has been made on those fronts, I want to very publicly thank Don Share, the editor of Poetry, as well as Francisco Aragon, who I know has been an advocate for Latino writers all over the country.
That said, these are only two people in the world. They are not able to go out and singlehandedly change every book awards ceremony that hands awards to Latinos at the same rate that ice melts in Greenland, nor can they alter the editorial policies of every journal that overooks Black writers, nor can they re-anthologize the anthologies where "regional" editors separate the Chicano from the Puerto Rican. And here is where I will invoke:
THEY CONSIDER HOW, IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF PERCEIVED MISTRUST, CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE CAN BE FORGED TOWARDS THE GOAL OF BETTER PRESENTING THE BROAD SPECTRUM OF AMERICAN POETRY.
Sometimes, when the atmosphere is of perceived mistrust, when one's colleagues are feeling marginalized, and when writers of color suffer their anxieties in private or public, we go out and create our own tables of contents. This is what the Black Arts movement did. This is what the Nuyoricans did. This is what Third World Press did. And this is what we did at the Acentos Foundation: Raina Leon and Eliel Lucero, two poets from the Acentos collective, decided to create a journal for Latinos, by Latinos, online. Not a lot of distribution cost, not a lot of paper being pushed, or resources wasted. And, unsurprisingly, plenty of entries to wade through. When Latino poets are given the space to write and code-switch without translation or apology, when they are given the space to stretch and not worry about how some schools of political thought play out in a narrative, when they are given the freedom to not think 24/7 about the fact of their Latinidad, amazing things result, things like Latinos actually submitting work to you.
I've often heard the complaint lodged by editors about writers of color: how can we consider you when you don't submit to us? And I've often heard its retort: How can we submit to you when you never consider us? The Acentos Review is one of many answers to the problem. By showing the depth and breadth of Latino writing, and the insistence of Latino writers to get to the humanity beyond questions of identity in the United States, we are, in a small way, showing the broad spectrum of American poetry...or at least, the possibilities of it. Much can be said, and someone here may well say it, about the other entry points to the U.S. canon: To MFA or Not To MFA. Where do we seek out new voices? What's the difference between soliciting work and seeking work out? When has a journal gotten too big to see past its own prejudices?
I leave the rest of these answers and questions to the audience here, but in the meantime, it is my hope—especially considering the unfortunate absence of some of the original panelists—that is a beginning, not an ending point, and that constructive dialogues towards parity, inclusivity, and the end of Table of Contents Anxiety, can begin, at AWP, online, at home, in academia, and in the slush piles.
Poet/editors discuss inclusiveness (and lack thereof) of minority voices in literary publications. Representing both mainstream and more community-based projects, the panelists consider the challenges of inclusiveness, and how successful (and unsuccessful) they have been. They consider how, in an atmosphere of perceived mistrust, constructive dialogue can be forged towards the goal of better presenting the broad spectrum of American poetry.
*************************
In racking my brains for a systemic way to approach this topic, I heeded some good advice and simply went back to the panel description.
POET/EDITORS DISCUSS INCLUSIVENESS (AND LACK THEREOF) OF MINORITY VOICES IN LITERARY PUBLICATIONS.
In all fairness, it is hardly accurate to call me a poet/editor. I've been the fiction editor for The Acentos Review for a comparatively short time. I have been a poet, though. So I feel more comfortable speaking, for the most part, about my voice as a Latino poet, and where I fit in this sentence. The question for me is, am I a minority voice? If we're talking in terms of ethnicity, here is the tale of the tape: I am Puerto Rican and Cuban, identified with the African diaspora, born in Edison, New Jersey, and despite tea party protestations to the contrary, a natural-born American citizen. Where I grew up in Paterson, NJ, the majority was Black and Latino. To be more specific—African-American, West African, Jamaican, Boricua, Dominicano, Cubano, Peruvian, Colombian, Guatemalan. But, not by much. Paterson is also home to one of the largest Palestinean and Syrian communities in the United States. Still, until the advent of round-the-clock Dunkin' Donuts, my favorite place to acquire cappucino was at an Italian storefront called Cafe Capriccio on 21st Street, run by a tiny Italian man who apparently sold nothing but the stuff. I don't know if I can rightly call myself a minority voice, but Paterson taught me that I am one voice out of many kinds.
In terms of influence. I drop my coin, of course, in the fountain of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. I also would have said Mark Doty straightaway, except that Mark was kind enough to point out to me at a reading once that he gets HIS penchant for exacting, revelatory detail from Elizabeth Bishop. So there's Doty, and there's Bishop. I would trace my fearlessness with vernacular speech and code-switching—that is, my right to use it as I see fit—to Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Willie Perdomo. And I am unafraid to mention my cultures, my politics—in other words, my specific stories, the ones only I can tell—because of the examples of Martín Espada and Sandra Cisneros. And the fact that I am a writer at all can be traced to where I started: the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, the louderARTS reading series at Bar 13, the Acentos Poetry Showcase in the Bronx. Not exactly the MFA system. And that's where the picture gets interesting for me.
While my identity as a Latino, or as a writer, or as an American, has never been in doubt for me, I have engaged in some very creative accounting as it relates to my identities in the literary world. By literary world, I mean the conglomeration of presses, literary foundations, Universities, organizations, editors, journals...basically, anyone that you could conceivably submit a cover letter to, or that asks you to write a bio. My bio studiously hid my experience in the spoken word and slam worlds, and for good reason, I thought: because editors look at slam and spoken word in someone's bio and immediately turn into pillars of salt. I wish I could chalk this up to simple paranoia on my part, except that I began hearing first-hand anecdotes about how true it was. Not so much the salt pillars, but how panelists for foundational awards tended not to even read the manuscripts from spoken word writers, or how anthologies would make mention of slam and spoken word, but not publish the work itself because it is built for the stage. Even now, anthologies containing these so-called spoken word or slam writers get published with the words "warrior," "revolution" and "outlaw" alongside them, or with the stated need to Bum Rush the Page, or Take the Mic.
If you're thinking to yourself what this has to do with race or ethnicity, consider for a moment this partial list of foundational writers for much of what we call spoken word and slam: The Last Poets, Gil-Scott Heron, Sekou Sundiata, the writers of Nuyorican movement including Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero and Sandra María Esteves; Patricia Smith, Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore. And I found myself surrounded by black and Latino writers in the slam scenes of NYC: Roger Bonair-Agard, Lynne Procope, the aforementioned Patricia Smith, Edward Garcia, Willie Perdomo, Miguel Algarín, and the 150 or so nationally-known and ethnically diverse Latino writers that have passed through Acentos, the reading series I curated in the Bronx. Not to mention the numerous and multiplying Cave Canem fellows who live and write in the New York area. All this to say, the idea that there were writers of my ilk, my ethnicity, my races, my familia, that somehow felt left out of the American canon, or out of certain anthologies and journals, or who felt mistrust toward anyone because they were marginalized, was not only foreign to me, but infuriating.
Yet, the one common thread I can link all of these writers to is a phenomenon I call Table of Contents Anxiety. This is not an affliction, to my knowledge, that is suffered by Anglo writers. (I will happily stand corrected if need be.) Table of Contents Anxiety arises when the first reaction to holding a new journal or anthology in your hands, before you even read one line of literature, is to flip open the Table of Contents and quickly scan it for black folks, or Latinos, or Native Americans, or anything, ANYTHING, besides the usual Smorgasboard of the Unsurprising when it comes to editors and their lists. I know I am not alone in this TOC Anxiety. I know some of you in this room suffer in silence. I know some of you in this room haven't shut up about it since the 1970's. However you deal with your particular anxiety, know that is it very real, and it goes to the heart of this perceived mistrust within the literary community, and definitely contributes to my presence here today.
REPRESENTING BOTH MAINSTREAM AND MORE COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECTS, THE PANELISTS CONSIDER THE CHALLENGES OF INCLUSIVENESS, AND HOW SUCCESSFUL (AND UNSUCCESSFUL) THEY HAVE BEEN.
Please understand that all the original panelists had a hand in crafting this panel description. This part, however, escaped my notice until I started considering how, among slam poets, self-sabotage often contributes to isolation. What I do isn't poetry, they'll say. Well, who's to say? And similarly, who's to say what I do at the Acentos Review isn't mainstream? And considering that we've gotten submissions from as far away as Brazil, that we have published an interview with Ana Castillo, that we seek out new writers with as much aplomb as we accept established writers, I'd say we've been pretty successful at what we do. But we're not mainstream. CAVEAT: We only publish Latinos. Well. Maybe that makes us community-based. Maybe that makes elena minor's PALABRA journal community-based. Because Latino equals community. Because Latino does not equal mainstream.
So what's mainstream to a poet? Well. If I were an alien to this planet (tea partiers be damned), I might look to relatively large, well-paid entities with ambitious titles like The Poetry Foundation, or Poetry magazine, or The Poetry Society of America. And until recently, I would have been hard-pressed to find nary a Latino within their published works. To that end, for what progress has been made on those fronts, I want to very publicly thank Don Share, the editor of Poetry, as well as Francisco Aragon, who I know has been an advocate for Latino writers all over the country.
That said, these are only two people in the world. They are not able to go out and singlehandedly change every book awards ceremony that hands awards to Latinos at the same rate that ice melts in Greenland, nor can they alter the editorial policies of every journal that overooks Black writers, nor can they re-anthologize the anthologies where "regional" editors separate the Chicano from the Puerto Rican. And here is where I will invoke:
THEY CONSIDER HOW, IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF PERCEIVED MISTRUST, CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE CAN BE FORGED TOWARDS THE GOAL OF BETTER PRESENTING THE BROAD SPECTRUM OF AMERICAN POETRY.
Sometimes, when the atmosphere is of perceived mistrust, when one's colleagues are feeling marginalized, and when writers of color suffer their anxieties in private or public, we go out and create our own tables of contents. This is what the Black Arts movement did. This is what the Nuyoricans did. This is what Third World Press did. And this is what we did at the Acentos Foundation: Raina Leon and Eliel Lucero, two poets from the Acentos collective, decided to create a journal for Latinos, by Latinos, online. Not a lot of distribution cost, not a lot of paper being pushed, or resources wasted. And, unsurprisingly, plenty of entries to wade through. When Latino poets are given the space to write and code-switch without translation or apology, when they are given the space to stretch and not worry about how some schools of political thought play out in a narrative, when they are given the freedom to not think 24/7 about the fact of their Latinidad, amazing things result, things like Latinos actually submitting work to you.
I've often heard the complaint lodged by editors about writers of color: how can we consider you when you don't submit to us? And I've often heard its retort: How can we submit to you when you never consider us? The Acentos Review is one of many answers to the problem. By showing the depth and breadth of Latino writing, and the insistence of Latino writers to get to the humanity beyond questions of identity in the United States, we are, in a small way, showing the broad spectrum of American poetry...or at least, the possibilities of it. Much can be said, and someone here may well say it, about the other entry points to the U.S. canon: To MFA or Not To MFA. Where do we seek out new voices? What's the difference between soliciting work and seeking work out? When has a journal gotten too big to see past its own prejudices?
I leave the rest of these answers and questions to the audience here, but in the meantime, it is my hope—especially considering the unfortunate absence of some of the original panelists—that is a beginning, not an ending point, and that constructive dialogues towards parity, inclusivity, and the end of Table of Contents Anxiety, can begin, at AWP, online, at home, in academia, and in the slush piles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)