I'll read a couple of excerpts from a sequence-- a series--
a sequence poem called "Serpentine Voices."
What I've tried to do in this book
is document the struggles of three generations,
approximately-- three, four, five generations of people
who have worked in the fields, following them
from the point of immigration to the fields
and then leaving the fields behind.
And then ultimately circling back and going
to demonstrate with the United Farm Workers
at the edges of those same fields.
Right now I have the privilege of having
a student in my office--
a student in one of my classes--
whose father owns one of the tomato fields I didn't pick in.
So it always seems to come back full circle.
"From Silence."
I think it's important to understand this title, too--
that part of my own education included
taking several courses in graduate level Spanish--
Spanish graduate courses in Latin American Women's
literature, because I felt there was
this gap in my own understanding of my own cultural identity,
that there was more I needed to know
to understand how it was that the process of colonization
and decolonization influenced the kind of character that
developed in the '70s and '80s in the United States.
These women's voices coming not just from the United States
but from all of the Latin American world--
Spanish-speaking world.
And one of the--
I mean using the term now-- ovarian works I read was
a novella by Maria Luisa Bombal titled La Última Niebla,
in which for the first time-- imagine this little over
20-year-old Chilean woman of the upper class,
sitting at Pablo Neruda's kitchen table,
writing a book in which she documents the struggles
to discover a sense of identity outside of being someone's wife
and someone's daughter.
And the terms she used were "el silencio" meaning "the silence"
and "el vacío" meaning "the void."
And so both those terms come into play
in this particular poem.
"From Silence.
How many voices can I plum in this poem.
Tricky poem, sometimes in the first person
"I," as in sometimes the story is mine, as in me
the author, the first-person narrator.
And at times the voice becomes third person "we," plural,
not imperial.
Because sometimes we were all voice, girlfriends, mis amigas,
de parte de.
On behalf of all of us, voices drowning out that choking
silencio, that pestilent marshland of a vacío.
Because we were something.
God, we were something else."
"Huelga.
Fresno slumps late summer.
Raisin grapes dry on paper trays.
Crepe myrtle, purple plum burnish the college campus,
student body twice the size of my hometown.
Winemaking meets a general education mode.
Professors serve finals at the Gallo Winery.
Agriculture majors milk cows at dawn,
saunter back to plates of thick bacon, butter-basted eggs.
Some become lawyers; others shoulder family farms.
Still, others sell the family farms to local speculators.
We never knew their names but sun-red and neckish,
their faces grimace from across the barricades
as we chant Huelga, Huelga, Huelga!"
And then two more pieces.
"The Farmworkers' Daughters.
Khaki, everywhere khaki.
Not us, boy.
Our dads wear khaki in the fields.
Khaki cruddy with sucked plums and peaches,
khaki topped with white dress shirts
pressed by mouthy daughters who iron their hair so it lies
like banners over shoulders-- daughters who
swear to wear mini skirts and tight, tight dresses when we're
out of sight.
We'll be so out of sight."
And the last one from the series,
I'll read "The Girlfriends."
"Rosie/I got pregnant.
Her/my lover swore it wasn't his/their fault.
It was cinco de mayo, 16 de septiembre and I/we/she/he/they
broke loose.
Loose hips whipping through cumbias,
ankling through rancheras, hips grinding
through night-long sets of lovemaking,
the intensity of a rolling tent revival.
Rosie/I had a miscarriage/baby.
Rosie/I thought I/she was lucky."