Almost immediately after the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, media outlets nationally and locally began to analyze the role of the Latino vote.
Politicians and the media were reminded, once again, that Latinos in the United States are not a monolith. And the Democratic party that once confidently counted on them for their support, is now figuring out how to win back votes from a critical, fast-growing group.
Author and poet Rigoberto González, who has reviewed Latino poetry for 20 years, may have helped unravel and understand the Latino experience in the U.S., and its impact in American life.
“People who are not Latino will talk about us, they'll talk over us, they'll talk for us,” González told WLRN. “And there are very few opportunities for us to speak for ourselves.”
It’s why poetry and writing from Latinos is so important to have, says González, and a new published anthology that he edited is asking the big question: “What does Latino poetry reveal about America?”
“I've been asked a couple of times during these very politicized times,’ why is it important?’ Why Latino poetry matters now,” said González, a professor of English and director of the MFA Program in creative writing at Rutgers University, Newark.
In ‘Latino Poetry,’ published by the non-profit company Library of America, more than 180 poets write about experiences with identity, queerness, immigration, language, land and their descendants — in both English and Spanish, and spanning from the 17th century to the present.
But all have one overarching theme that González caught on to while putting the anthology together.
“Looking for home, searching for home, celebrating home,” said González. “So that's how we came up with the ‘Places We Call Home’ as a general theme of the anthology.”
WLRN recently spoke with González about Latino Poetry. The book will be featured in the 2024 Miami Book Fair.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: The anthology is laid out almost like a history book in the sense that it begins with work from as far back as the 17th century with colonial texts and it ends with works by Latino poets of the new millennium. Can you talk about why you decided to lay out this anthology like this and what that process was like?
When we looked at all the other anthologies that were out there, none really focused just on poetry. And also, there were 20th century anthologies, there were very contemporary anthologies, thematic anthologies, but there wasn't one that attempted to really present, a sort of broad view of Latino poetry, of Latino poets, and also of the history and legacy of these incredible works that were being written today.
And so we said, ‘okay, well, let's see how far back we can reach.’ And so then we came up with the idea of looking at the early works. There weren't that many that were available during the colonial period. There's a lot of narratives, a lot of nonfiction that has been preserved and written, but there's not a lot of poetry.
But we said, let's go as far back as these texts that were written originally in Spanish, because one of the other sort of connections of Latino poetry and Latin American poetry is language. And I said, well, there's actually three things that we inherited from our colonial ancestors. One is language, Spanish, Catholicism as a religion, and also for many of us, our names.
So I thought, okay, well, let's go back to the source, to the origins of that. And that was the colonial period. Poetry usually written by Spanish monks. And then moving forward through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there was not a lot. Again, it was difficult to find, even digging through the archives. But we felt it was important to highlight these texts as our antecedents or as our history. And these are the early attempts at employing poetry as a way of documenting experience, documenting journey, documenting thoughts, and also the individuals who were making new homes in this territory, which eventually became the United States.
And so that connection there is that with the 20th century poets, we have so many immigrants, we have so many exiles and refugees. So I thought, well, that's the connection. Also, there's a connection of movement, the connection of looking for a home.
WLRN: It's fascinating to read works that date back centuries and realize similar themes that Latino poets of today also deal with and express in their works. I was personally struck by a poem by Salomón de la Selva titled ‘My Nicaragua,’ and it was published in 1917, and I'll read a few lines from that now for context:
The rows of earthen little houses where men dwell,
And women, all too busy living life
To think of faking it, that is my country,
My Nicaragua, mother of great poets!
And when you see that, what? That in despite
Newspapered revolutions and so forth,
The different climate and the different
Traditions and grandfathers of the race,
My people and your people are the same:
Folks with their worries and their hopes about them,
Toiling for bread and for a something more
That ever changes, that no one could name—
And this is worth the journey to find out.
WLRN: In the poem, he describes his humble town in Nicaragua, the people there. He even describes it as “not picturesque” and a “dreary commonplace,” and says it's much like New York, except the people in his town “seem so glad The sun is shining.” So this theme of loving one's homeland while living in a new land is something that is also touched on by poets of the new millennium. Can you talk more about the common themes we see throughout the book that have spanned generations?
The history of Latin America in the 20th century, there's so many folks that have been forced or tasked to leave for various reasons. There have been plenty of wars in Central America, for example. Economic reasons. Also, people simply looking for a better life for their Children. So many of us came through that journey. And also in Cuba, for example, the folks that were exiled. So somehow or other, you know, many of us ended up in this country.
And so there's always this feeling of recognizing that, ‘okay, this is a new space that we're in. This is our new home and we miss our old one.’ We begin to romanticize it, to idealize it. We miss it. We long for it. And many people just never go back or they can't go back and so then you have to make peace with that instead of feeling as if one doesn't have a home. And this took a while to be able to embrace this concept that instead of feeling that you're in between homes, that you belong to no place, that you actually belong to both places or to multiple places, that you actually have an abundance of home, not a shortage of homes.
And so I think that poetry has really helped people not feel as if you're displaced, but rather. ‘Okay. I had a home. My ancestors had a home. And now we have another one.’
WLRN: There are also themes in this anthology that historically Latinos have not been super open about or have been shamed for, like Latino queerness and gender roles. Can you talk about some of these works and why you felt it was important to include?
That was another way of looking at home, because sometimes, you know, our homes rejected us, our homes didn't accept us, right?
And so then, what then becomes the home? I said, well, memory is a home, and also the body is a home, language is a home, culture is a home. It's that sense of, you still love home, you still miss home. You still love the people that even rejected you.
So then you have to make peace with wherever you move. And wherever you move, you take your body with you. And it's your body, which has been rejected, which has been shamed. And so now it's about loving yourself, loving the body. And so a number of the queer writers that I included in here, it was important to have that. Because you're right. There is that rejection of LGBTQ, the lifestyle, sexuality, the identity, the people. For many of us, we're thrown out, we're cast out, or rejected, or we're silenced. Poetry then was a place to have a voice and to document experience, to document your thinking, your inner world, and also the love that you have for yourself.
WLRN: There's also the theme of language. Some of the works are in Spanglish, both English and Spanish, and there's work on the idea of code switching and identity and not feeling like you belong here nor there, “ni de aquí ni de allá.” Talk about some of these themes.
You know, we've gone through so many different stages of understanding why language is important in the Latino community. For many folks that are second generation, third generation, that they lose Spanish, they lose the native tongue for different reasons. One of the main reasons is that parents understand that accents immediately signal foreignness and foreignness is not welcomed here.
So in order to help their children or grandchildren or the next generations later, in order to help them fit in to this country or assimilate into this country, language immediately becomes muted or becomes silent or becomes ‘you have to learn English and forget about Spanish because English is what's going to help you survive in this country.’
There's also been the bilingualism efforts in this country. Sometimes there's been pushes to embrace bilingualism. Other times there's been efforts to get rid of them. So there's also the political aspect of it and why people lose their native tongue or their family language. And also, there's the shame about not knowing Spanish or being criticized for not knowing it, or being told you're not Latino enough or you're not Latino because you don't speak Spanish.
So all kinds of dynamics are at work. And so I'm hoping that having an anthology in which there is a range of our languages, that they're all valid.
WLRN: Was there a piece of writing that you discovered while putting this anthology together that really stood out to you, or maybe it's a piece that you've read many times, and if so, what about it stands out to you?
There is this poem by Ruth Irupé Sanabria. This is an Argentinian American poet. And I think that, sometimes it's just like songs. Songs mean different things at different stages of your life.
You could have heard a song when you're 10 years ago, and it's like, ‘oh, it's a nice song.’ But then something happens in your life. And then when you hear the song again, it means something completely different. And I think that this poem called ‘Distance’ by Ruth Irupé Sanabria, I remember reading her book when it came out a while back and it didn't move me at the time until I reread it recently because of a situation in my family. And I thought now this poem means something different to me. I was actually quite moved by it. I'd be glad to read it:
My grandfather asked me: could I remember
him, the park, the birds, the bread?
I'll be dying soon, he said.
His voice would stretch the ocean and end there,
inside the olive phone in our tiny kitchen.
My mother would stretch the green shell to my ear,
speak, say something, speak. My fingers tugged the cord
across our red wooden table, listening to the dark adios,
I carved half moons into the wood with my fingernails.
In case I am dead by your next birthday, hija, remember…
We ate without him, without any elders
and the world was fine.
We had yet to bury our bones in this foreign land.
When we do, where will we come from then?
Already home is a carnation pinned to our cold breasts.
And so the poem is about mortality, definitely, but for many of us that move away from home and we leave our elders behind, and then our elders die away from us. I think that there's this expectation, certainly in Latino families and certainly other families, that there's this togetherness and that you are aware of your immediate family, that you are there for the sort of stages of life. You're there for the death. You're there for the birth. You're there for the funerals.
You're there for the Christianings. You're there for the weddings, and so forth. But what happens when you become separated? Some people migrated, others stayed behind. So I think that poem very aptly titled ‘Distance’ meant something very different to me, because I do have my nieces and nephews still in Mexico, and they're going through some important moments, and I'm not there to witness. I thought, ‘well, if I had never left Mexico, I would have been there for every single birthday. I would have been there for every graduation and other things, and I'm not.’ And it's become, as I grow older, more and more painful to be absent, more and more painful to be away. And suddenly I began to understand what it feels like or what it felt like for my elders. My parents, my grandparents, who are also here in the United States and had to miss out on these family things happening in Mexico.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Miami Book Fair’s ‘Fiesta de Poetas: A Celebration of Latino Poetry,’ featuring Rigoberto González.
WHEN: Sunday, November 24, 2024 @ 5 p.m.
WHERE: Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus, Room 2106 (Building 2, 1st Floor), 300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
