Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Lisa Bradley

Editor's note: this is the 13th in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them. 

Lisa M. Bradley writes speculative fiction and poetry. She has work forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, and Mythic Delirium. Originally from South Texas, she now lives in Iowa with her spouse, child, and two cats. Her latest project is a weekly blog series, "Writing Latin@ Characters Well." She listened to "Why We Build the Wall" (from Anaïs Mitchell's album Hadestown) nonstop as she wrote the following essay.

Borders

I think about borders. A lot.

It's probably natural, considering I grew up in South Texas, just minutes away from the international border. Once when I was young and living with my grandparents, a couple of men came to our door. Wet, ragged. Exhausted, wary. I fetched Gram and after speaking with them for a few minutes, she went to the kitchen and put together leftovers in aluminum foil for them, then tersely sent them on their way. I remember being surprised that my grouchy grandmother was giving food to apparent strangers. She didn't even like it when I served myself too large a glass of milk. I asked her who those men were, and she said they'd just crossed the river. She was pensive the rest of the day.

"The river" was, of course, the Rio Grande. I was amazed that the men had crossed a river without a boat, that they were on the run. I tried to imagine how scared and excited they were to be in another country, to be doing something illegal. I hoped they got away.

Another time, I went to Bentsen State Park with my family. The river runs right alongside the park, and when I looked across the sunny water, I saw sparse trees, some happy, relaxed goats, some people. I remember thinking, "That's Mexico. Those are Mexican goats. Those are Mexican people." I had to tell myself, because otherwise I wouldn't believe. The land over there looked exactly the same as on the American side. So did the goats. So did the people. We waved to each other. "That's Mexico" I told myself, trying to make it real. Trying to believe.

Living in Iowa hasn't diminished my interest in borders. If anything, the physical distance has brought the concept of borders into sharper focus. The novel I'm revising now is set in a west Texas town that's been quarantined after an industrial accident. The town is surrounded by watchtowers, an electrified fence, and a trench. The residents trapped inside protect themselves from violent neighbors by building barricades and booby-traps. Before long, it's impossible to tell who is fenced off and who is trapped inside, who the walls protect and who they keep out.

Even when I'm not writing about physical or geographic borders, I'm thinking about the hazy lines that divide one community from the next, one cause from another, one persona from the multiple voices inside our heads. I like to find chinks in the fences. My blog series "Writing Latin@ Characters Well" is an attempt to help non-Latin@ writers nudge under the fence of Thou Shalt Nots that discourages them from writing the Other.

A friend asked me to write specifically about the differences between what (conversations) the Latin@ community shares among themselves and what it shares with outsiders. This is the kind of question I love, but perhaps I am the wrong person to answer it. After all, I am so fond of transgressing. Is there anything I keep solely to mis compadres? Or even mis comadres? And if I can't keep private matters private, am I likely to be trusted by the community I seek to represent?

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, "being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul — not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders."

By this definition, I am Mexican through and through, from one liminal "end" to an infinite number of other quasi-endpoints. My fascination with gaps in the walls, with crossing rivers fences laws, is not a barrier to but an illustration of my belonging to this group.

So maybe I'm a fine person to ask "what is shared and what kept hidden in Latin@ communities?" I'll poke at the question the same way I do all the fences blocking my view. I may not find an answer, but man…

It'll be fun tearing down the wall.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Melissa Fontanez

Editor's note: this is the tenth in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Melissa Fontanez is working on a collection of poetry and her first novel. Her poem, “four ways of looking at the moon,” was published in the chapbook Something in the Water. Books, photography and music consume her life, but the love for her family shines the brightest.

Picking at threads

If you pay attention and listen to the world around you, the magic of inspiration is not hard to find.

My poetry reflects emotions, thoughts and feelings I have swirling around inside. The light touch of a breeze sliding along my skin. Standing under a tree at night, staring up at the moon. Watching my daughter purse her lips and the tufts of dandelion floating away with her wish. Listening to the stark quiet of a winter’s day. Admiring the vibrancy and rustle of fall leaves. The pleasure and pain of love. It all speaks to me and has me running for the nearest pen and paper, trying to capture it all. Writing poetry also helps me work out things that may be bothering me, or a way to remember all the good.

The novel I’m working on started with one red thread.

Each member of the writing workshop I belong to was told to close our eyes as our instructor placed a thread in each of our hands. I opened my eyes, ran my finger over it lightly until I started to write. From that prompt, came one of my main characters, Ines. She picked at the thread on her sweater, as she anxiously waited for some news. I can’t tell you what that is; you’ll just have to read all about it when I’ve finished the book, but just that simple, lone thread inspired me to do something I thought I never would.

I won’t sit here and say it’s always easy. Any writer can tell you that. I battle with loving and hating my work. For the longest time it was hard for me to even share it with others. It is a very vulnerable position to be in, but there is nothing else I would rather do.

I can only hope that someone will read my work and be able to identify with it in some way. That’s always my favorite part when I’m reading; to be able to connect with the words and find your voice.

So be open, to everything, and see where it takes you.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Julia Rios

Editor's note: this is the seventh in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Julia Rios is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. She hosts the

Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction), and

is one of the three fiction editors at Strange Horizons. Her fiction,

articles, interviews, and poetry have appeared in Daily Science

Fiction, Apex Magazine, Stone Telling, Jabberwocky, and several other

places. Her website is www.juliarios.com, and she's @omgjulia on Twitter.

Embracing diversity

My father came to the United States from Yucatán, Mexico when he was a teenager. My earliest memories are filled with his melodious voice, deep and still bearing an accent that marked him as different from my mother's WASP family. Though he spoke English fluently, and even got a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern California, his English speech patterns remained slightly off. He never taught me Spanish, but I managed to absorb some of his foreign markers all the same. To this day, I sometimes use the wrong prepositions, or not quite usual English constructions when I'm tired. "Put it in the table," I'll say. "Close the lamp."

Most of the time when that happens, it amuses me, but sometimes it makes me angry, or profoundly sad. My father wanted me to be proud of my heritage. More than once in mid-September, he took me to Mexican Independence Day celebrations on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, he made sure I knew Cinco de Mayo was not "Mexican 4th of July" like many advertisers claimed, and he shared stories and food from his home with me in between our infrequent visits to his family. But for all that, the reason my father didn't teach me Spanish was because in Southern California, Latin@s abound, and unfortunately, so does racism. My father wanted me to pass for white, to assimilate, and to have the privilege accorded to people who didn't speak Spanish at home.

As an adult, this push and pull of pride vs. shame is still confusing, and I spend a lot of time thinking about who I am, which communities I belong to, and why. I realized a few years ago that as a child I loved the show I Love Lucy, because it presented a comforting family structure. There was a white mom and a Latino dad who had an accent, yelled a lot, and also liked to sing. It was very similar to my own home. When I asked my sister if she liked it, too, she was surprised and said yes, and that it was weird we'd both liked it because it wasn't a particularly new or popular show during our childhood. It should be obvious though that there's nothing weird about us wanting to see ourselves reflected in our media.

Because of that, I have been paying more attention to what I put into my fiction lately. I started out writing with default straight white viewpoint characters, because that was what I'd understood was "normal" in commercial narratives. Now not everything I write includes Latin@ content, but I've issued an open invitation for those aspects of my background to come out and play. I think about all the other people out there who long to see representations of themselves, and I take that as challenge to embrace my own diversity.

I'm not just a Latina. I'm Mexican. I'm American. I'm bisexual. I'm a feminist. I'm left-handed. I love cats. All of these things are part of me, and none of them alone make me who I am. My story "Oracle Gretel" recently appeared in PodCastle and is forthcoming in Heiresses of Russ 2013 edited by Steve Berman and Tenea D. Johnson. It features a bi protagonist and a talking cat. My story "Love and the Giant Squid" will appear in July in Pen-Ultimate: A Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Lisa J. Cohen and Talib Hussain. It features a character who has a lot in common with my own father, though he's very much a fictional person. I don't know what the future will bring for my writing, but I do know that all of it will be in some way Latina, because it all will come from me. If I want to encourage my Latin@ peers to stretch out and embrace their full identities, whatever they may be, I guess first I must start with myself.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Melinda Palacio

Editor's note: this is the sixth in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Melinda Palacio is an award-winning poet and novelist. She lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Her poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, won Kulupi Press’ Sense of Place 2009 award. She is the author of the novel, Ocotillo Dreams (ASU Bilingual Press 2011), for which she received the Mariposa Award for Best First Book at the 2012 International Latino Book Awards and a 2012 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting, (Tia Chucha Press 2012) was a finalist for the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Award and the Patterson Poetry Prize. Read more of Melinda's work at www.melindapalacio.com or every other Friday on La Bloga. http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/05/readings-and-greetings-at-old-zoo-in.html

Think, Dream, Write

My inspiration and writing process continues to evolve. Sometimes the change is so drastic, I wonder if I have a personality disorder because I don't favor routines. Even my favorite foods and color vary.

When it comes to writing, whether it be fiction or poetry, what motivates me most is getting the story right. I don't need to be in the same room every day in order to write. Rituals are lost on me because I often take my laptop and work in a different area of my house. Speaking of houses, I live in two different cities, Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Therefore, I can't rely on setting or mood.

Much of my inspiration for storytelling involved looking at old family photo albums. My grandmother would point to pictures of relatives I had never met and would tell me who they were and what they were doing when the photograph was taken. The photographs gave me a strong visual sense. I didn't realize it until I heard California Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, describe looking through old photos with his mother as an early act of poem making. Poem making and myth making through stories of family photos are some of my earliest memories. With three or four phrases from my grandmother, I would craft a whole story in my head and dream up an entire narrative.

Before I sit down to write, I like to apply the Think Method, as seen in the 1962 film the Music Man in which a con artist teaches a small town's children how to strike up a band and make music by thinking, rather than practicing. I'll often spend hours and weeks thinking of new scene, chapter, or essay before I compose with pen and paper. At some point, I transfer my draft to the computer. Given that I'm dyslexic and cannot read my writing, I rely more on thinking and remembering my initial idea. Sometimes, the ideas come to me in dreams. I keep a notebook and pen by my bed because as much as I will myself to remember, I often forget the idea by the next day.

While I love variety and working in different genres, especially fiction and poetry, what I truly enjoy most is revision and the noise a crumpled paper makes when it lands in the recycling basket. This is more fun than a virtual manuscript and garbage can on the computer screen.

My motivation doesn't change. I still want to write the best poem that I can possibly write, the best book, or the best blog post. My secret is to read my work aloud. All the hiccups and extra words stand out better when I read something out loud. This is a step that's easy to skip when I am on deadline, but I'm much happier with the work when I slow down and take the time to read my draft out loud from a printed page.

On newspaper goodbyes – and the persistence of poetry

I’ve said goodbye at numerous newspapers in my lifetime, each as distinct from one another as it is possible to be. After almost nine years, I’m leaving the Catholic Standard & Times and today was my last day. It has been an extraordinary learning experience (and, no, I don’t mean just learning to spell baldacchino, or to tell the difference between a zucchetto and a biretta).

There has been tumult and laughter; hundreds of column inches to pare away and last-minute must-run standalones; adrenaline-pumping breaking stories; and enduring friendships forged over coffee and page proofs.

Pretty much as in every newsroom.

Except, this one has had poetry.

I was surprised the first time I realized CS &T and Phaith columnist-chemist-theologian (how's that for a trifecta?) Michelle Francl-Donnay followed the links in this blog and read my poems online. I was even more surprised to find out not only did she like the work, she made her chemistry classes at Bryn Mawr actually read all manner of contemporary poetry.

Yesterday, she showed up with a book of Jane Hirshfield poetry for my goodbye. “The Supple Deer,” she told me, has a line that reminds her of the work (the gristle and grace) of editing: To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

Then this morning, Matthew Gambino, the director of the CS&T and Phaith magazine, surprised me with three books of poetry, among them Billy Collins’ Nine Horses, and Red Bird by Mary Oliver. I opened both at random and marveled at the way the stanzas fitted themselves to the circumstance in which I was reading them.

The third volume of poetry (Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art) I didn’t have to open at random, because Matt had already singled out a passage for me to read:

If you would be a poet, write living
newspapers. Be a reporter from
outer space, filing dispatches
to some supreme managing editor who
believes in full disclosure and has a
low tolerance for bullshit.

I love it.

It seems to me that newsrooms must have, at their heart, poetry. And the stories conveyed – word by word, line to line, in clipped cadences – are the same ones we chase in art and in prayer.

I’m looking forward to the distinct cadences and metric of the Spanish-language newsroom I’ll be joining next week.

I trust there'll be poetry, so I'll sign off with these lines from Neruda's poem "I'm explaining a few things" (translation is mine):

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
And the poppy-covered metaphysics?
And the rain that sometimes beats down
words, filling them
with openings and birds?
I'll tell you the news….

Eros and Psyche - A Valentine's Day poem

He lets the soul want him.

He lets the soul love him.

And when she seeks to see

what she can no longer live without,

he sends her away from him. 

With nothing but prayer and desire

for him to light her way.  

 

Teresa of Avila craving ecstasy knew this.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pleas falling into the great

silence God had become, knew this.

Psyche, chasing after her lower-case god

through the dark underworld and back, 

knew this.

The butterfly wings our souls wear

are emblems of dream and despair.

Will they lift? 

Can they carry us

high enough to pierce

the heavens? 

 

My hand is outstretched,

as you knew it would be.

If you wanted me

blind and searching

then you have me
just so.

Here,

it’s yours.

The thin skin

that contains

the soul,

and everything

between.

©2009 Sabrina Vourvoulias

Poem to appear in Sept. 6 edition of Floricanto at La Bloga

The moderators of Poets Responding to SB 1070 (become a fan of their community page on facebook) have selected one of my poems, "Broken Ground," for the Sept. 6 online issue of the Floricanto at La Bloga (http://labloga.blogspot.com/).

I'll post a link when the poem is up. The poem is up at: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2011/09/magu-memorial-on-line-floricanto.html. Tell me what you think.

Poets Responding to SB 1070

A new poem of mine is up on Poets Responding to SB 1070 page on facebook: http://on.fb.me/gonkFM

Go read, comment (or not), "like" the page. And be aware that 1070 copycat legislation is proposed for Pennsylvania. (See one of my previous blog posts for a list of anti-immigrant legislation introduced to the Pa. legislature this session.)

Off topic: Another poem to read

So many fairy tales and myths to recast into poetry, so little time.

Click here to read my piece which appears in the latest issue of Scheherezade's Bequest, the online publication of Cabinet des Fees, a journal of fairy tales.

Besides the allusion to the character in the Arthurian cycle of myths, a fata morgana is a mirage or optical illusion that appears just above the horizon line.

Fairy tales and poems

In an unabashed attempt at self-promotion, read my newly published poem (based on the fairy tale of Briar Rose, a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty, but a decidedly non-Disney version) at Cabinet des Fees, an online journal of fairy tales.

Or, if you hate poetry, don't read it -- but go click on it anyway so I get lots of hits.

Oh, and comment here or comment there, you'll have my thanks.