RSSNot afraid names, with colors like the fireworks: Ríos and Serros
Apr 15
Poetry, Reading, Writing Alberto Ríos, Chicanos, living in the borderlands, Michele Serros, Poetry, sometimes I think there is no language more beautiful than Spanish No Comments
Today I’m breaking with my theme, but only just: this week has been about Spanish-speaking poets from Nicaragua to Spain. Today, it’s about Chicano poets who grew up living split lives.
The two poets I want to focus on are Alberto Ríos and Michele Serros. He’s from Arizona, she’s from California. Both grew up in a between place, a borderlands. Gloria Anzaldúa has a fantastic book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, that explores this idea, and as she writes:
…the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two people shrinks with intimacy.
The Chicano experience varies widely: Ríos was punished by his teachers for speaking Spanish at school. Serros was harangued for her inability to speak Spanish. Both carry their “shifting and multiple” (to borrow a phrase from Anzaldúa) identities into much of their poetry. I love both poets equally not only for what they say but how they say it. I am smitten with Ríos for his song-like qualities, Serros for her frank sense of humor.
Alberto Ríos
An excerpt from “Day of the Refugios,” which comes from one of my most favorite books of poetry, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body:
I come from a family of people with names,
Real names, not-afraid names, with colors
Like the fireworks: Refugio,
Margarito, Matilde, Alvaro, Consuelo,
Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto.
Michele Serros
This is an excerpt from “Mi Problema,” a poem in Serros’ book Chicana Falsa and other stories of death, identity, and Oxnard:
My skin is brown
just like theirs,
but now I’m unworthy of the color
’cause I don’t speak Spanish
the way I should.
Then they laugh and talk about
mi problema
in the language I stumble over.
A white person gets encouragement,
praise,
for weak attempts at a second language.
“Maybe he wants to be brown
like us.”
and that is good.
April may (I love that this sentence requires a phrase that puts April and May next to one another) be half over, but don’t forget to stop over at Poets.org or the Poetry Foundation or, for that matter, your local library’s web site to see what National Poetry Month events may be coming your way.