And Lois and I can tell you that a high school
class this morning came up with 10
questions in the first minute.
So the pressure's on.
[INAUDIBLE]
Have you given your new book of poetry a title?
Journeys.
Journeys, that's right.
Journeys.
And you're working on a book of essays too.
Can you say a word about them?
I had written some essays for a couple of magazines.
And originally, way back when probably when
I was in about junior high, I think essay writing really
had a lot of appeal to me.
Now, having-- although there's a lot of struggle writing
with poetry, there has to be more pleasure,
I wouldn't do it.
So now I'm finding that I have to struggle to convince
myself to try prose.
And sometimes when I sit down to work on an essay,
I just think, Oh, there are just so many words.
I wish I could just sit and write a poem about this.
But there are some things that I feel I really want to say.
And sometimes I think using prose
is a way of reaching another audience,
and that there are people who rightly or wrongly feel,
if it's in poetry, I'm not going to understand,
it I'm not going to tackle it.
So I am working on a collection of essays,
probably the theme's very related
to a lot of what my poetry is.
I have an essay about the aunt that I mentioned,
who is very, very important to me.
There's an essay about her.
And poems about being a Chicana or Mexican-American.
Poems about something I've become very interested
in the last year and a half, which
is a cultural conservation movement,
and trying to motivate people to treasure their ethnic heritage
regardless of what it is, that's really important to me.
So I am going to have some essays about that.
On that note, are you--
what do you consider yourself, a Chicana writer or a writer
or a mujer writer or [? a poet ?]??
Well, I probably consider myself a writer.
But I don't have any trouble with someone saying,
well, she's a Chicana writer or she is a women writer.
I don't-- that doesn't bother me at all.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
I mean, it's a big part of--
I mean, that's what I am and it's a big part
of what I write about.
I can certainly understand the other side,
and I understand writers or artists who say,
don't put any kind of an adjective, you know.
I am a writer or I am a painter and I don't want to be--
I can understand that.
It's just something that doesn't bother me.
Have you ever thought of writing poems in Spanish?
Or have you done so?
No.
I really haven't.
And as I said this morning, I think
it's hard enough to write in the language
that you feel most comfortable in.
And I do my thinking in English.
I grew up speaking both, but I probably don't speak Spanish
even once a week now.
And so I don't feel that I have that fine sense that I
would want to have.
Now I have thought that if I could spend time
in a Spanish speaking country for a while that--
if I could get to the point that I thought that I
were thinking in English--
I mean, thinking in Spanish, I'd tackle it.
But until then, some people have been very good and very
generous and have translated some of my poems
into Spanish, OK?
And so I read them that way, but I always credit them.
You just mentioned the conservation
of the ethnic heritage.
Don't you think that language is an important part
of the [INAUDIBLE]?
[? Speak ?] with them, you know.
I have very, very strong feelings about the minority
writer and the importance of getting our story and our words
as part of American literature.
What generation are you [INAUDIBLE]
provide inspiration [INAUDIBLE] generation [INAUDIBLE]
first generation.
Second generation, uh-huh.
My father was born in Mexico and came to the US
when he was like two or three.
So really, doesn't have many memories.
My mother was born in the States.
Both are bilingual.
I grew up at a time when neither of my parents
had grown up in an English speaking home,
but they wanted their children to.
I was lucky in that I had a grandmother who
did not want to learn English.
And so I was very close to her, which
is what kept me speaking Spanish, you know.
And I would say that I view myself
as really very much one of the lucky ones.
I went to Catholic schools, I had, I think,
wonderful grammarians as teachers,
and teachers that made me memorize a poem a week.
And I think this is all a big part of my love
for the English language.
I have very strong love for it, OK?
Now I have very strong feelings about Spanish too,
but that's why, getting back to your answer, you see,
for me to decide to write in Spanish,
I think would not be, as I said, almost honest.
I have a very strong loyalty to making English reflect
a lot of what some of us are.
In your--in the the interview that appeared in the Wildcat,
you said that, children, Chicano children,
they have a strong desire for imaginative literature that
reflects their reality, literature in English.
Don't you think there is a need for literature in Spanish?
Sure, I do.
Lots of them are still--
Sure, I do.
But that's not--
I would just say, that won't be my role, OK?
That I would say if I were going to pick a role,
it would be to do the best writing
that I could in English.
That my feeling is, in terms of children's literature,
that there are many Hispanic or Chicano children
who find English very alien because the stories
that they read, the picture books that they grow up with,
don't reflect any of their experiences.
Well, how's that language going to be appealing?
And so I'd like to be a part of changing that.
Sure, I think there's need for the other.
Would you say [INAUDIBLE]
Well, I don't think of the desert in negative images,
and I think a lot of people do, you know.
And I-- particularly when I see people
move into El Paso from the East and they
go through the usual stuff about no trees
and how can you stand it, no water, and so dry,
and all this.
And I think, for me, the desert--
and I know it sounds trite, but I'm
going to give you my answer.
For me, it's really just a great teacher,
that's how I feel about it.
And, you know, when you live--
I've spent my whole life in the desert.
And that doesn't mean that I don't think
I respond to another terrain.
And if I could move to Hawaii, I imagine
that I would write all kinds of poems about frangipani,
and that that'd be great.
But it just happens to be where I am.
You've conjured a lot of vivid images in your poem "Frenzy."
And I was just wondered what your life experiences
you drew from for that?
Oh, well we-- yeah, it was a pretty vivid experience.
I mean, this was not a made up one.
A tour group was taken out to this place and it was dark.
And--
Tour group?
Uh-huh.
Outside of Havana.
And there were maybe 20 of us, and the troop was very slow
getting started that night.
There'd been a blackout.
And so we sat there and got more and more tired.
And finally, they came on the stage
and there was a lot of drums and a lot of, for us,
I think, as US Americans--
and I'm sure Eliana will demonstrate this for us now--
a lot of very sensual dancing.
I mean, really sensual dancing, which kind of
throws you off base anyway.
And then the lead dancer was a very large Cuban.
And he was very imposing, and I think
he knew he was frightening, you know.
And he would just look right at you
and you kept looking down and hoping he wouldn't pick you.
And he would grab somebody and take them up on the stage,
you know.
And this kept going on all evening.
And so you could just feel yourself
getting more and more tense.
And then they did do this chicken thing, you know,
where someone bit the chicken's head.
And it wasn't so much what they did.
What fascinated me was just that building up of the frenzy,
you know.
Both on the part of the dancers, there was the building up
the frenzy.
They started out pretty loose anyway.
But by the end, the music was louder
and the dancing was wilder.
So there was a lot of frenzy on the stage.
But on the part of those of us that were sitting there
in the shadows trying to look like a stump of wood, you know.
I mean, really, my mouth was dry and I kept thinking,
you know, what am I going to do if he comes and grabs my hand?
Am I really going to be willing to go on the stage?
And luckily, I kept looking down and he never did.
But it was really very, very strong images.
Anything else?
If not, I thank you all very much for your time.
Thank you very much.