WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:15.739 align:middle line:84% Moving perhaps from that to this other book, Bird Avenue. 00:00:15.739 --> 00:00:21.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:23.580 align:middle line:90% I've been working on a series. 00:00:23.580 --> 00:00:27.870 align:middle line:84% This new book-- this other book Bird Avenue. 00:00:27.870 --> 00:00:29.460 align:middle line:84% I'm working on a series of something 00:00:29.460 --> 00:00:32.729 align:middle line:90% I call my lyrical gang poems. 00:00:32.729 --> 00:00:35.250 align:middle line:84% Gangs were a lot different when I was a kid, 00:00:35.250 --> 00:00:37.620 align:middle line:90% before automatic weaponry. 00:00:37.620 --> 00:00:40.860 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.860 --> 00:00:43.920 align:middle line:84% And the drug scene, it's gotten quite serious. 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:46.140 align:middle line:84% But when I was a kid, the other change 00:00:46.140 --> 00:00:49.920 align:middle line:84% was that it wasn't the boys you were afraid of. 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:52.080 align:middle line:84% It wasn't the boy gangs you were afraid of. 00:00:52.080 --> 00:00:54.780 align:middle line:84% You were afraid of the girl gangs. 00:00:54.780 --> 00:01:01.290 align:middle line:84% Because the girl gangs would get you, certainly. 00:01:01.290 --> 00:01:04.349 align:middle line:84% And their mothers were the ones who were even worse. 00:01:04.349 --> 00:01:06.570 align:middle line:84% The fights that would start between the girls 00:01:06.570 --> 00:01:09.870 align:middle line:84% would get finished by their mothers then look out. 00:01:09.870 --> 00:01:14.940 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so I've been working on this series of poems honoring 00:01:14.940 --> 00:01:17.610 align:middle line:84% my gang of girls, these girls that I 00:01:17.610 --> 00:01:19.680 align:middle line:90% ran with in junior high school. 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:22.920 align:middle line:84% Because there was a power to that. 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:26.280 align:middle line:90% There was a feminism to that. 00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:31.350 align:middle line:84% There was something in that experience that's valuable 00:01:31.350 --> 00:01:36.910 align:middle line:90% and that ought to be celebrated. 00:01:36.910 --> 00:01:40.470 align:middle line:84% So with that in mind, I started these series of poems. 00:01:40.470 --> 00:01:44.730 align:middle line:84% And the gang that was my gang was called 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:48.600 align:middle line:90% Las Gatas in Spanish, The Cats. 00:01:48.600 --> 00:01:51.810 align:middle line:90% Gatos is usually the cats. 00:01:51.810 --> 00:01:54.390 align:middle line:84% Gatas is a feminization of the cats 00:01:54.390 --> 00:01:58.050 align:middle line:84% but it also has these other connotations I won't get into. 00:01:58.050 --> 00:02:01.080 align:middle line:84% Las Gatas, in Spanish we were Las Gatas. 00:02:01.080 --> 00:02:04.530 align:middle line:84% In English, we were The Cat because it was nine of us, 00:02:04.530 --> 00:02:06.360 align:middle line:90% nine lives to a cat. 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:08.400 align:middle line:90% So we were the cat in English. 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:11.220 align:middle line:84% And the nine of us was Bird, I was Bird. 00:02:11.220 --> 00:02:14.130 align:middle line:84% People always ask me about the bird imagery in my poetry. 00:02:14.130 --> 00:02:17.610 align:middle line:84% Well, I was called Bird all the way through up 00:02:17.610 --> 00:02:18.610 align:middle line:90% until high school. 00:02:18.610 --> 00:02:21.810 align:middle line:84% So there was Bird, Tiny, Mousy, Grumpy, Cat 00:02:21.810 --> 00:02:25.242 align:middle line:84% Eyes, Flaca, Sleepy, Princess, y Betty La Boop. 00:02:25.242 --> 00:02:27.900 align:middle line:90% 00:02:27.900 --> 00:02:36.660 align:middle line:84% And I started this manuscript when I was in my Ph.D. Program. 00:02:36.660 --> 00:02:39.180 align:middle line:84% And they had something in colleges called Women 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:41.520 align:middle line:84% in science, like a support group for women 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:43.500 align:middle line:84% in the sciences, wonderful group. 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:45.840 align:middle line:84% And yet there were never any Chicanas in it 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:48.390 align:middle line:84% because there are very few Chicanas in sciences, 00:02:48.390 --> 00:02:49.440 align:middle line:90% in the hard sciences. 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:54.090 align:middle line:84% And there weren't any Chicanas in this women in science. 00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:57.060 align:middle line:84% So I started playing around with the idea of women in science. 00:02:57.060 --> 00:03:00.390 align:middle line:84% So I started these series of poems 00:03:00.390 --> 00:03:02.730 align:middle line:84% playing with the names in Spanish 00:03:02.730 --> 00:03:04.980 align:middle line:90% of the fields of science. 00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:09.090 align:middle line:84% And so thinking about science and these girls, 00:03:09.090 --> 00:03:10.650 align:middle line:90% this is a poem that came out. 00:03:10.650 --> 00:03:14.140 align:middle line:84% And the field of science is astronomía. 00:03:14.140 --> 00:03:16.860 align:middle line:90% Astronomy, astronomía. 00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:21.060 align:middle line:90% Astro, no mía. 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:24.570 align:middle line:84% The heavens, the stars, aren't mine. 00:03:24.570 --> 00:03:26.505 align:middle line:90% The heavens, not mine. 00:03:26.505 --> 00:03:29.280 align:middle line:90% Astro, no mía. 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:31.380 align:middle line:84% And there's a little bit of Spanish, 00:03:31.380 --> 00:03:35.550 align:middle line:84% and I'll translate the last line when I get to it. 00:03:35.550 --> 00:03:38.430 align:middle line:84% "The closest we ever got to science 00:03:38.430 --> 00:03:42.060 align:middle line:84% was the stars, like the Big Dipper 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:46.440 align:middle line:84% ladling hundreds of thousands of beans and diamonds 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:49.740 align:middle line:84% for some Greeks long ago, when Lore 00:03:49.740 --> 00:03:57.660 align:middle line:84% was a story of chaste women set in the sky, Diana, Juno, 00:03:57.660 --> 00:04:05.370 align:middle line:84% Pleiades, las siete hermanas, daughters, captives of Zeus. 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:11.100 align:middle line:84% And the children, the children changed into trees, 00:04:11.100 --> 00:04:15.600 align:middle line:90% bears scared into stars. 00:04:15.600 --> 00:04:21.510 align:middle line:84% We wished ourselves into that sky, held our breaths 00:04:21.510 --> 00:04:26.790 align:middle line:84% and stopped dreaming, stopped stories, our hearts, 00:04:26.790 --> 00:04:31.050 align:middle line:84% and escalated up into that ash trip 00:04:31.050 --> 00:04:38.080 align:middle line:84% to heaven, seven smoked rings of escape from the chase. 00:04:38.080 --> 00:04:41.340 align:middle line:90% Y nada, punto. 00:04:41.340 --> 00:04:43.590 align:middle line:90% We were never stars. 00:04:43.590 --> 00:04:45.660 align:middle line:90% Our mothers would call. 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:49.380 align:middle line:84% The fathers of fate, heavy like mercury, 00:04:49.380 --> 00:04:53.400 align:middle line:84% would trash our stomachs into our wombs. 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:59.220 align:middle line:84% Cold, we'd roller coaster back down to the Earth, 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:04.980 align:middle line:84% to the night before school, before failed examinations 00:05:04.980 --> 00:05:10.760 align:middle line:84% y el otro which is much harder to describe. 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:15.740 align:middle line:90% Study, sure, we studied hard. 00:05:15.740 --> 00:05:20.870 align:middle line:84% But all I could remember was that man, Orion, 00:05:20.870 --> 00:05:27.962 align:middle line:84% helplessly shooting his shaft into my lit house from the bow. 00:05:27.962 --> 00:05:28.462 align:middle line:90% ¿Y yo? 00:05:28.462 --> 00:05:28.554 align:middle line:90% Hay bow. 00:05:28.554 --> 00:05:29.054 align:middle line:90% Y ya me voy. 00:05:29.054 --> 00:05:33.290 align:middle line:90% 00:05:33.290 --> 00:05:35.660 align:middle line:90% And me, there's a bow. 00:05:35.660 --> 00:05:37.780 align:middle line:90% And I'm gone." 00:05:37.780 --> 00:05:39.000 align:middle line:90%