Roll Call:

What the Water Carries

Transcribed by: Victor Jackson

Raina Leon: Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

(SOUNDS OF OCEAN & SHORE)

Jasminne Mendez: Writers are like that, remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what banks were like, the light that was there, and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory, what the nerves and the skin

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: remembers, as well as how it’ll appear. And rush of imagination is our flooding.

Jasminne Mendez:  ….Is our flooding.

Toni Morrison tells us in the Site of Memory

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Hey Bienvenidos

Jasminne Mendez: Hey, how you doing? ?Cómo estás? Buenas tardes!

Raina Leon: Hey, everybody, bienvenides.

Jasminne Mendez: So glad you could join us for this episode!

Raina Leon: Wepa! I am Raina Leon and I'm so delighted to be with you all.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: And I am Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and I'm ready for a good time.

Jasminne Mendez: And I'm Jasminne Mendez, calling in here from Houston, Texas. And today, me and my fellow poets are planning to discuss the complexities of Afro Latinx identity, water, Blackness, Latinidad, the diaspora and what it means to be all of that or to counter against that in poetry and art and life. You know, it's the reason that I personally applied for this podcast for the VS. podcast, Roll Call. I invited my lovely friends Raina (Raina Leon) and Darrel (Darrel Alejandro Holnes) to join me in this conversation, because we definitely wanted to be sure that the black Latinx experience was documented in this series. And we thought it was an important and vital voice.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I'm also just excited to talk about these poems because they're cool, and like, everybody should know them. And it's a pleasure to talk about the work by these terrific poets. And it's gonna be super fun to talk about it with everybody here.

Raina Leon: And also anything that Jasminne tells me to do, I'm just gonna do, right?

Jasminne Mendez: Likewise, Raina.

Raina Leon: That's what we need, right? Like, I think that when we think about water to this movement across different spaces and connection to land, and body and people, right, you, you want to say yes, you want to be in connection and communion with folks. So I like that idea of these currents of overlapping currents, throughout our conversation of the poems, the experience, the experiences, and also just who we are and how we connect and build with one another.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, likewise, I agree. And, you know, I think speaking of connections, our connection to each other is varied through mostly the poetry world. But I know Darrell, and I have the connection of theater and performance and playwriting,

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: and Houston!

Jasminne Mendez: and Houston. That is true. And so we I think we've all approached or talked about Afro Latindad, whether it was in panels, or in our work, or with each other in a variety of context, and, and whether we're agreeing with that label that's put on us, or we put it on ourselves, or whether we're moving away from that particular, you know, nomer and label of our identity and ourselves, and maybe even how it shows up in our own work. And so I think that yeah, this conversation is really just a time to explore that as well. Yeah, I mean, maybe can we talk a little bit about that with regard to our own identities and maybe where we are, or where we've come to with that label? In particular?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, you know, the Greater Good Commission last year, which is a commission for Latinx, Latina playwrights that's put together by the LatinX Playwright Circle and the Pregones PRTT Theater (Puerto Rican Traveling Theater). We dedicated the first round to Afro/Black Latinx playwrights, you know, I had this really rigorous conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen about, about how different people from our community identify, and what the relationship with Afro Latinx , Afro Latina identity is, and that word and how new that word was. And now how old that word feels to some people. And, you know, and just kind of like figuring out is it Afro-Indigenous? Is it Afro Caribbean? Is it I mean, if you're from the Caribbean anyway, you know, we're like, what is it that we can use to describe ourselves and I was really inspired by that process because it reminded me how many different ways there are to talk about us. And what an opportunity that is, you know, to really get to know our identities across a spectrum.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, yeah. And even in planning this episode, right, we talked a little bit about how this notion of Afro Latindad,is a newer concept, how some of our elder poets, you know, folks, like even, maybe even, Willie Perdomo, right, that have come from a long line, a long history, perhaps, you know, haven't and maybe still don't even identify necessarily with that label, right? It's something that's much newer and more prevalent now. But not necessarily that comes from or that or that our elder poets from before, would have identified with you know, I think there was a stronger, which were kind of leaning into a stronger connection to the nationality, right. So, you know, for example, me kind of moving away from identifying as Afro Latina, and saying, I'm Black Dominican American, or Afro Dominican, and sort of identifying more with the nationality. And that carries sort of its problems and confusions as well, right. But they do they, I think that the Latinx label attempts in one in some ways, or even the AfroLatinx label attempts to put us in like this monolithic, like, we are this one thing, and it varies so much, even just from país to país, you know, country to country, like, your Panamanian experience is different than my Dominican experience. Your Puerto Rican Latinx experience is different.

Raina Leon: Well, and I'm thinking about that right of like the labeling of generations, right? So on my father's birth certificate, for example, he is white. And certainly that is not our experience as AfroBoricua people, and thinking about how labels change over time, and that identification over time, and you don't discover that until you are really rooted in your own people. And I want to connect a little bit back to like, how Jasminne, and I like how we know one another is also through CantoMundo, right? Which is home for like Latinx poets. And I remember applying and being like, well, am I Latinx enough? Am I too black? Like, like, what's gonna happen in this space? Because I don't I don't know about y'all. But like, my, my elementary experience, for example, was I was the only Puerto Rican person in a school of over 800 people until my brother came, right?

Jasminne Mendez: Yea, I'm always the only Dominican anywhere pretty much, like my state of being in Texas.

Raina Leon: Well, and I think like, what are you? Not,Who are you? Not? Who your people? But what are you? Right? And that being from all sides. And so this I, this ability to name ourselves and really think about? What are the layers of our different identities and diaspora? And how does that impact our how does the history impact our present and our possible futures? And what we're imagining into?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I really believe in slashes (/), right, because the whole idea that we need one term to identify a large group of people who have some things in common, you know, but also have many differences, I think, has always fundamentally been problematic. And this goal to categorize the world is a project that will ultimately continue to fail, you know, because new identities continue to be formed every year. And I think that there's a lot of power in adding more to the list as we continue to grow and evolve as a people.

Jasminne Mendez: I agree. But one of the things that we realized, again, in conversation, as we delve into this topic, was water connects us across the diaspora. Right. And that was one that was the theme and some parts of the ideas that that we felt, were really resonant in the poems that we're going to be talking about today, and just in our own connections with each other, and with our various mother lands, if you will, you know, and what the water carries and how the water carries us or has carried you know, our ancestors in different ways. And so that's really what we want to explore today. And what I'm, you know, really excited to talk to you guys about,

Raina Leon: We had so many poems to choose from, and there are so many incredible poets. We finally narrowed it down to three. Those three are: To The Sea by Aracelis Girmay , Zapotec Crossers by Alan Pelaez Lopez and Hearing That Joe Arroyo Song at Ibiza Nightclub 2008 by Elizabeth Acevedo. And this piece is To The Sea by Aracelis Girmay.

Aracelis Girmay:

(READS POEM)

(SOUNDS OF WATER)

“To The Sea”

great storage house

history on which we rode we touched the brief pulse of your fluttering pages spelled with salt and life your rage

your indifference, your gentleness washing our feet.

All of you going on whether or not we live

to you we bring our carnations yellow and pink. How they float, like bright sentences

atop your memories

 dark hair

Raina Leon: Are we ready to talk about this poem? Yes? To The Sea? Yeah, for me, I have to note that Aracelis herself is one of these people who walks with such tenderness and emotional care that she is a being who can hold all of these, these tones within one palm. And so “to the sea that this great storage house”, there's such possibility and openness in there. And then the “light of the carnations, yellow and pink, how they float” there is a tenderness in that, that image of these flowers floating with brightness, “like bright sentences”. And yet there's also such turmoil beneath the waters is such a tight poem. And there's so much happening within it that I think has, if you will, such bounty and beauty for all the rippling meanings within it. I don't know, what do y'all think about this poem? I love this poem!

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, no, I just love that we're opening with us. Because, you know, really, this idea of the sea and how we, our ancestors, in some way or another were carried to these Latin American countries, right. And that's how we ended up being who we are in many ways. And the sea is the way in which they got there to open with us and talk and to think about the vastness of the sea, and how that that we beautiful line that says “all of you going on whether or not we live”, right, and you think of that, that loss and that grief and that death, but it's it continues, right? The sea continues whether or not you know, we are there with it. It is it's a storage house of so much history, right? The bones, the ships, the the memory that the water carries, right, all all of that, and that I think even many of us feel, you know, in our bodies, when we at least for me, when I get near water, it's like it's a coming home, I often feel so displaced as a military brat, as a daughter of immigrants. As someone who is a Dominican in Texas, I'm like, Where do I belong? And the minute I'm near any large body of water, usually the sea is where I'm like, This is home. And I think, you know, so many of our of our poets of AfroLatinx poets, even from the diaspora also feel this sense of longing and connection. And also, you know, grief in some ways with the sea, right, because we know that so many of our ancestors died at sea, and they're resting there. And so it's, it's this, there's this tension that exists. I think, with that body of water,

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I definitely feel that, that sense of home whenever I'm near my body of water as well. I'm from Mona familia, as we would say in Panamá , which is that my family has worked on the Panama Canal or in some association with it since its construction. And actually also were as a part of that. And so we have always had a connection to the canal, which unites both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. And so I think of both oceans as my home, you know, even though I typically only experienced one at a time, except when I'm in Panama, right? And so, this idea of the sea, being a great storage house of history, I think that that is where that feeling of home comes from. Because when I'm at the sea, when I'm at the ocean, when I'm at the water, I feel that history, I feel like I am witnessing history participating in history. Right, by entering that storage house. Is that at all similar to how it is for you, Jasminne when you are?

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, no, definitely, I definitely feel that connection to to something, you know, beyond me before me, and just really feeling you know, yeah, at home, whether I'm in Galveston, or whether I'm, you know, on the Caribbean ocean in the Dominican Republic and getting my feet, you know, wet in the sand, and there's just that, yeah, there's that history, and then there's that that grounding. And for me, there's also ritual, right, the offerings that we make, you know, to the sea and the ways in which we are we honor her right but we also you know, as my mom likes to say La Mar es  Traidora and so she's she's a mom never learned how to swim right, which is also part of many folks from the black diaspora. They're their history right and so she fears the ocean she won't go into the deep waters. You know what I'm saying? I tried to tell her no mom the ocean is beautiful she's like it is but she's also she's also treacherous, right she she's also to be feared, and we have to respect her. And so I think that there's seeing the sea right as this, this woman, this body, this living, sort of breathing, aching, being and respecting that as well.

Raina Leon: Well, and with that, we're we're all walking bodies of water, we're mostly water. And so this idea of being in, in close relationship and being at home next to water makes perfect sense to me of, and also this, this fear of water to at the shore edge, the connection of water and maybe the water once you ban the water within you back, right we're, we're bodies of water walking. And then I think about too, you know, generational trauma, generational joy. What is passed down from one body of water to another when we think about river to or mountain, to river to tributary and on right, so this movement of water and how that changes how that's replicated within generations too and what's carried as we keep going to that of a memory carried in the water. Tony Morrison gave us that, that wisdom. And it's echoed again here. So I hear this, this replication, this echoing and it's like truth in truth and truth. And it's, it's also the ebb and flow of the water. It's the ebb and flow of the ocean, right? All of this truth.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Your comment has me zeroing in on these lines, “your rage, your indifference, your gentleness, washing our feet”, rage, gentleness, rage, gentleness, that dichotomy is so powerful, and so important. I find those I find those feelings within myself, you know, especially when people ask me to talk about or think about identity, right. And, and our and our history as a people, you know, there is that rage, but there's also an indifference and there's also gentleness, you know, and I think that this poem does such a good job capturing that, you know, pointing out how the sea is that and those things, but then also giving us an opportunity to think of those things as it relates to life beyond the sea, right, as it relates to us individually, right, and our own identities in relationship to it. So that those lines in particular stand out to me.

Jasminne Mendez: And I love too what she's doing, like, as a writer, you know, we get back to, to being writers and writers from the black Latinx diaspora. She's also got this other sort of metaphor happening with pages spelled bright sentences atop your memories, dark hair, so there's like this writing of history in this writing, and this this memory related to perhaps even language, right, and the ways in which we speak or communicate and the ways in which the sea is speaking to us or has things to say, as well.

Raina Leon: And, and yet at the counter narrative to that, that cementing of a focus on the word, right, the sentences are top the water, right, the pages are in the water in the sea. And so it's, it's pushing back on the idea that knowledge can only rest in the book and the word in the in the print, right? And saying that it's here, it's just look at it, touch it, it's, it's a part of you, and in relationship to you.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah and at the top, we have the history, but we end with memory. Yeah. And so I like this question that you're posing Reina are implying which is, is history, that which is just written in the page, or is history that which is embodied in the water, right? And that is carried and passed down and is remembered.

Jasminne Mendez: And it's collective, because of the “we”, we live, we bring, there's that collective memory kind of echoing there.

Raina Leon: And thinking about movement, right? Like all this movement on that water, conscious for me, you know, migration and, and of course, Aracelis is speaking to this, this constant relationship, and grief in this in this poem. And, and I think that that's also a commonality with some of the thing, the poems that we chose of like that, that longing, that grieving, and again, a wide range of emotional tomber, if you will, that can be held in very short poems.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Is there something subversive that's happening in this poem? I'm thinking especially as it relates to archive?

Raina Leon: Forsure, absolutely. Like it's defiant of the solidification of archive in a particular building or structure or,

Jasminne Mendez: or even paper or just the physicality of it, right? Yeah,

Raina Leon: I think so. Don't we all wanna be submersiv— subversive

(ALL LAUGHS)

Jasminne Mendez: That play on words there.

Raina Leon: Subversive subversive poets? Yeah, the name of the series.

Jasminne Mendez: There we go. Yeah. Yeah. And I know, you mentioned this idea, right of looking at, you know, the water also being that, you know, we know, it's also sort of the vehicle for slavery, but thinking about it as, as we view immigration, right. And one of the questions we considered right and looking at it a lot of this work is, you know, we all for the most part are products of or have some background related to our people being immigrants and and how has that perhaps, changed the way that we view blackness or that blackness is looked at, you know, in particular, you know, here in the United States, for example, right? Because I think, obviously, it varies from country to country in Latin America. And I struggle with that question, because I feel like there is sometimes a resistance to accepting blackness outside of thee African American sort of presumed monolithic experience, and saying, like, there's more than one way to be black and clearly, like we show that. And so I don't know what if you all had to have thoughts on that, or experiences?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Well, I've started to rethink the way that I have configured diaspora in my head. When I was in London, they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the WindrushGeneration a few years ago. And they are a generation of all sorts of people from the West Indies, who migrated to London about 50 years ago, under a particular visa and under particular circumstances. And there's a huge Caribbean legacy in London, as a result of that. And this, this idea that there's a West Indian diaspora, and a lot of my ancestors, not all of them, but a lot of my ancestors came to Panama, from the West Indies, to build the Panama Canal and then stay to operate it, you know, etc. As the years went on. And, like, what does that mean about my blackness, as it you know, in terms of its like, Caribbean heritage, heritage, you know, Central American heritage is very much tied to the Spanish colonial history. But my West Indian side is obviously tied to a more, you know, British history, you know, but there's that overlap in terms of the blackness, the Africaness, right, on both sides, if you will, and it has me thinking a little bit more about Caribbean diaspora in particular, and like black Caribbean diaspora, or Afro Caribbean diaspora in the United States, you see this so much in New York, in particular, and, and how that's different, you know, in interesting, lovely and beautiful ways from other kinds of Afroness, blackness, from throughout Latin America.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: You know, and, and so I think a part of me, saw that there were African Americans, and obviously, I know their Afro Latinos, Afro Latinx, people and their Afro Europeans. But now I'm really kind of like how we were talking about at the top of the podcast, really thinking like about breaking that up more, fragmenting that even more, and just think about, like, what does it mean to be AfroCentroAmericana, what does it mean to be, you know, black Caribbean? What does it mean to be all of these different, like, if you want to call them subcategories,

Jasminne Mendez: and just very nuances, layers forsure

Raina Leon: I think about the, the stories that we carry from our peoples around migration, as well. And, you know, my grandfather was a Merchant Marine. So an Afro-Boricua person traveling all over the world in the 1940s and 50s. And perceived very differently depending on where he was in the world. And when my grandmother, who was a very fair skinned woman with strawberry blonde hair, comes to the states on the Marine Tiger, as many Puerto Ricans did at that time. And he was like, you don't understand the way that people perceive us as a partnership as a married couple will be very different in the states, like in New York, even in New York, than it is in Puerto Rico. Right. And, and the way that we can relate to one another will be vastly different than what what home was, as much as there was colorism and all sorts of like, racism and internalized racism and all sorts of things right, in their experience, and then coming here in the late 40s. And, you know, at that point, their relationship, their marriage that, it was illegal for them to be partnered right. And then for my grandmother, like I never asked her about what it was to also be perceived one way in with the shield of whiteness. And your children are perceived in a very different way.

Jasminne Mendez: Now, yeah, I will it's, you know, something that I think about often, you know, with my own daughter Luz Maria, like I think about like, I never really mentally prepared myself to raise a non black child. And so it's, it's sort of this interesting, like conversation that I'm constantly having in my head about, you know, how do I make sure she's, you know, an ally, right, for lack of a better word, or just empathetic and really, you know, it doesn't sort of fall into like anti blackness or racism or colorism and all the things that potentially can infiltrate right, her little, her little psyche, her little brain and her little perception understanding of the world. And, and interestingly, too, I wanted to mention, Raina I know you mentioned at the top, that the birth certificate, I think of your grandfather, and I recently my parents..

Raina Leon: Of my father, of my father!

Jasminne Mendez: Your father. okay, well, so even more bizarre because I was born in 1984. So even more current, my birth certificate literally has both of my parents listed as Hispanic. And it's, and I was born in Alabama, and my my father is visibly black man, visibly black Dominican man, but both of them as it says color or race, almost, you know, and there's older birth certificates, and it's listed as Hispanic. So if we go by just the archive, you know, circling back to this idea of the archive, and you know, nothing else about me, and I didn't have poems, and there were no pictures of me. And you know, my great great granddaughters dig up this birth certificate to them, I'm Hispanic, and there's no, you know, there's no lineage, there's no history, no understanding that I am that I identify and that I am a black woman right from, from the Dominican Republic

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: It’s just a reminder to me about how identity is constructed. Yes. You know, and how, in some countries you had, you were defined by a one drop of your African heritage, or African blood and in another country, you're defined by your a one drop of European blood. Right? So if you had any ancestor, any ancestor that was white, you could claim that you're not black, or anything else. Right? You could claim whiteness and how that bringing all of the all of those histories together when people migrate is really confusing and can cause a lot of conflict and long conversations.

(ALL LAUGH)

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, that I don't humor anymore. I'm just like, listen, I ain't got time. Yeah, well, and speaking of this idea of AfroIndigeneity, I'd love to listen and take a peek at a Alan’s for sure. And we can talk a little bit about the nuances and layers of their work as well.

Raina Leon: And this piece is Zapotec crossers, or haiku. I write post PTSD nightmares by Alan Peláez Lopez

Alan Pelaez Lopez: I will be reading Zapotec crossers, or haiku. I write post PTSD nightmares

(READS POEM)

(SOUNDS OF SHORE AND WATER)

One

Waves smack the body,

Nayeli, seven, drowning.

Spring: crossing season.

Two

Summer indicates

the migration will be “safe.”

Yej Susen, three, sprints.

Three

Inda Jani, one,

knows to crawl under the fence — 

she was trained all fall.

Four

At four ai-em, Yao,

twelve, is sewn inside car seat;

winter will protect.

Five

Itzel, five, plays dead.

Border patrol agents see

her body — they leave.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I think this poem is fascinating Zapotec crossers, and I am so excited to have discovered Alan’s work recently. I think it's so powerful how it opens, waves smack the body. That line not only opens the stanza, right, but it also sends us into motion across the entire poem. And so as the wave smack that body, it also pushes us all the way through the poem.

Jasminne Mendez: And it's it really is I mean that the weight of what this poem is able to do in you know those three lines, right there's five haiku there each only, you know, three lines and yet there's there's so much just depth and weight and, and even the trauma you can feel it right recurring with each one of these individuals that that are being named and that are that have gone through this experience. And, you know, I was I was really intrigued by the use of, obviously the seasons right when the spring, the crossing season the summer indicates migration will be safe. But then right, she was trained all fall, winter will protect, we're going through the seasons, right of life and of the year. And yet it's it's layered just each one right. So darkly and you know, in many ways,

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: yeah. This poem, I think, is so important, because it looks at the relationship between minors and water, right, especially thinking about crossing and what that particular kind of migration experience is, like, for so many, you know, millions that not only crossed US borders or borders throughout the continent of America, but also people who are crossing borders worldwide, right? Children are a huge part of the migration crisis that's happening globally. As you know, the world goes through so many changes. Yeah,

Jasminne Mendez: yeah, that that often gets so overlooked, I think in the media, right, we often the image or the picture that we see of the quote unquote, immigrant or undocumented immigrant is not often of a black immigrant or a black Latinx. immigrant. And yet, so many of them are right, black immigrants, or, you know, even black Haitians, right, that, that that are in that situation, and I think it's this poem, I think speaks to many levels and layers of of all of that as well.

Raina Leon: Well, and as the climate continues to change, and not just be a change but a crisis and an act of destruction of our world, there will be more and more and more migration. People who have no other option, right, the sea is rising. And thinking about this, you know, we keep coming back to water, right? This water smacks the body, right? This is not an opportunity of communion of like, meeting in homecoming and, you know, holding of history and memory and

Jasminne Mendez: to violence, right. It's violent, violent act,

Raina Leon: it's a violence.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: And what do y'all think about Alan using the Haiku form? And the choice to use haiku, here?

Raina Leon: there's so much right, like three lines.

Jasminne Mendez: I commend them because I can I, you know, to write a really well written, I could really packs, that sort of tension and energy, and just the emotional weight of what you're trying to say is difficult. And I think that they do an amazing job.

Raina Leon: I mean, to carry that as a sequence of Haiku. Right? Yeah. And to carry us through the entire time with the seasons. And for me, the last haiku where the season isn't as as prevalent, right, we don't have the season word that we are being drawn to, to pay attention to throughout the other ones. And yet “they leave” that “leave” for me has leaves in it, it has motion, it has a holder for all these seasons, as well as a holder for spirit, a kind of season. And a Killing Season,

Jasminne Mendez: “plays dead”.

Raina Leon: Yeah, “plays dead”, right? There's so there's so much in that last stanza that last haiku of a new kind of season, a terrible kind of season.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: And it's fascinating also how verbs are used in this poem, because it speaks to the agency of the of the characters. But it's also puts them in situations where their own agency is really not necessarily saving them, like Nayeli is drowning. Right? And Itzel plays dead. Right, and, and then ultimately dies at the end of that last stanza. And so it's interesting to think about power, you know, and how that's represented here through the choice of verbs, and what the characters in each of the stanzas are, are doing, right?

Raina Leon: Yeah. And there's so many big stories. Beyond that the stanzas so, like, “Inda Jani, one, knows to crawl under the fence. She was trained all fall” by whom?  what's the larger st-story here? And both Jasmine and I are mothers of very young children. My daughter just turned one, the idea of that constant act, to train your child to do something.

Jasminne Mendez: Right.

Raina Leon: That will save their lives, potentially, and it'll be a massive change in their lives. But this child is one, like that mother experience that is my lived experience shakes me to the core when I'm reading this, like the the constant work of that.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, no forsure echoing that I think just for you know, by no means any kind of comparison, but I freak out  just when I'm in a parking lot with Luz and I've got to put groceries somewhere and she's next to me and I'm like, stay right there like I've trained her to just not move because I'm terrified that a car is you know, and so I can't I can't even imagine what what you have to be going through right in order to, for that to be the conversation, right? How do you train? You know, this is one year old.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I've always thought that it's fascinating how kids learn to crawl. You know, that's always something I'm in marvel of. And it's such an accomplishment when they do learn to crawl, right? Because it's the first step in their, in their…. helped me you guys

Jasminne Mendez: Ability? Movement?

Raina Leon: The extension of their whole world happens.

Jasminne Mendez: They start to discover and explore more.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, right. And so but it's fascinating that here, it's not necessarily this, like joyous like, oh, okay, great. You're on that journey moment. It's like, oh, you know, you're using this maybe for your own survival, at one, which is quite a lot of pressure to put on a one year olds activities. And it's similar to Itzel at five playing dead.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, there's that juxtaposition there. You're playing at dead, which kids do like my kid does that, right? Playing that they're injured playing that they're sick, Yeah, but there's much more of a reality to this the survival mechanisms. Right.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah. And then the choice of smack in the first line also is interesting. I do think that in general, it's a little bit more, that there's some obvious violence in the word, but you could also smack someone in a playful way. And so there is that there is that double sightedness here as well. Alan is definitely a swordsmith.,

Jasminne Mendez: yeah, and going even to the car seat, right. Ideally, the car seat is what's supposed to protect, and in this case, the winter will protect and we think of the car seat as this place that is supposed to be safe. It's intended to keep our children safe. And yet somehow it's “Yao”is sewn inside the car seat. And so that's that's also an interesting verb, right being “sewn into it”. And this idea that that winter is what will will protect said child and not the car seat, and maybe this car seat isn't, is more again, a sign of violence and not safety, right, kind of the opposite of that. And I think of when I read that I think of the the Greyhound buses that actually were full of car seats that were supplied by some big name brand. And it was just really sort of harrowing for me to see that that image on the news that it was this giant Greyhound bus full of car seats for children that had been you know, that had crossed the border, and it was just like, holy cow, you know that that was just something that was really powerful to me, impactful at the time.

Raina Leon: Yeah. And time Yeah, thinking about like, I think about the work of folks who who draw from document, right, who draw from newspaper and and say that the story this one little line here is is worthy of much more focus and treatment. And I see echoes of that here of like the names of these children, whether they are the real names of these children or not. But naming is important. And the age of these children is important and tracking this movement and the trauma, which is also can like “Haiku, I wrote post PTSD nightmare”. This is a personal connection, the title, right? So this is not just like looking at the news. This is like the speaker has taken this poem. And there is such vulnerability and fragility, right and, and also a steeliness, because the telling of it right it's not it's not living just in the nightmare is actually on the pages here. And, and then I go back right to Aracelis right, the resistance of the page and also the subversiveness of couching this within the Haiku within the natural world. So being in connection of like, it is unnatural to be so traumatized by movement that is unnatural. And yet there are these people and these bodies who are moving, and these stories and these children, and we should pay attention

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Thinking about what you're saying right now and the newspaper the line, what we focus on, I can't help but also think about the work that Aracelis is doing and to the sea. And thinking about ocean as archive, what connections do you see here between Aracelis poem and Alan’s poem in that vein

Jasminne Mendez: I see like see the land as archive also right this this idea of what our borders and these arbitrary lines in the sand right as some have often called them, and, and how we move across them, but that the land itself, right, the water carries history, but I think our, you know, the physical land that that we are on or choose to move across also carries this history and where we as as our bodies reside, and each in each place, tends to also have memory and history and be a kind of archive, right, because our bodies are, especially as black individuals are treated differently depending on where we are. Right? And I think that that's also something to consider and how that's living.

Raina Leon: Yeah, I love how we've also shifted a lot of our conversation to thinking about water in connection to the body and an embodied experience, right, like the vibration of body, how we are perceived, how we walk in the world, how, how we own the strut of our own bodies, how we maneuver within spaces, and that coming through in all these different readings of the poem. And I think when we talk about Elizabeth's work that will come back again, right, in music and dance, right?

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah. And moving a little from you know, the trauma to the joy I think, as well.

Raina Leon: And this piece is Hearing that Joe Arroyo song at a Ibiza Nightclub2008 by Elizabeth Acevedo.

Elizabeth Acevedo:

(READS POEM)

2018

A boy I did not marry                  taught me to dance salsa on 2      placed

the fingers of his left hand            on my untutored spine;               you know what

it’s like to become someone’s clave

to love for the span           of the trombone’s long breath                  he      whispered

negra

so I spun                my heart landing            on     the     rum-covered     linoleum

of a nightclub

on what used to be New York Ave              in what used to be Chocolate City

I let him turn & spin                                 my name             bella negra

             his hands were less tender but still I let them roam

              when I                  1, 2, 3             5, 6, 7     in front of my mirror

I was always la negra defended in the lyric                       and     you     can     forgive

searching hands when a mouth swells the biggest ache of your body

                                                                                                 into song

(ALL LAUGH And SIGH)

Raina Leon: Yeah, I need a cold shower?

Jasminne Mendez: That sighhhhh.. I just had to sigh.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I love Elizabeth's work and I have for years. I just got to, CantoMundo also, Elizabeth Acevedo

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, I mean, and and you know, for those who may not know, the Joe Arroyo song it's, it's “Esclavitud Perpetua”. Well, Le Rebelión actually is the title of the song by JoeArroyo.

(ALL SING TOGETHER)

Jasminne Mendez: Bum Bum. Yeah, I have a poem after this song actually. And I feel like almost

Raina Leon: Yes. It's a fantastic poem. Yes.

Jasminne Mendez: Oh, thank you. No, I think that most of us have I don't know, I'm just gonna speak for myself. I have this moment also that Elizabeth has right on the dance floor with this song where the moment where you actually listen to the lyrics and you realize this is about you know what this song is about? Right? And this this slave master and ..

Raina Leon: Everybody does.

Jasminne Mendez: the man that comes to defend you know, his woman? Yeah, like just it's your dance and it's what's interesting about about that song and you know, talk about the poem as well but you're dancing salsa and you're having a good time and yet there's this this narrative where you hate that's happening at the same time and so this interesting sort of juxtaposition, right? That you're that you're in that several times I've cried while listening to the song and on the dance floor and dancing salsa and just kind of you know, I felt the the spirits in my body I felt the ancestors there with me and it's it's a powerful piece both this poem and the original song.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: When I was in college, I had a friend named Clementina and we were part of a big salsa group that would go you know to then salsa at Taco taco? No. Taco Milagro

Jasminne Mendez: In Houston? It’s no longer there, gentrification. But yes!

Darrel Alejandro Holnes:That was the spot.

(ALL AGREE AND ECHO IN LAUGHTER)

Raina Leon: I love that you're bringing to life this spot, right? Like if you didn't know now, you know, it's no longer there.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yes, yes. And you know, amongst all of my compinches, all of my friends Clementina was the only other Afro/Black Latinx person and whenever this song would come on, didn't matter who we were dancing to..dancing with, we would say, “Hold on a second, I'll be right back” and we would find each other and just kill it and just kill it to the song because it is just so powerful. And it's about history in a way that I think is like invigorating, and passionate, and important. So I'm so thrilled that Elizabeth wrote a poem about this song. And, and her experience about dancing it dancing to it in the club, because is, I think, for many of us, a transformative moment, right? That is marked in our memories.

Jasminne Mendez: And then I think so many folks in the United States, I will just say, don't really know or remember, or have been taught the history of the fact that like, slavery didn't just happen in the United States of America. And that's so many, right?. You know, people always ask me like, well, how are you black and Latina? And how do you speak Spanish? And I'm like, hey, my peoples boat just stopped, you know, one, one place before yours did. So that's how that happened, you know?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: also, please google before you come and ask me, because the information is out there. It's out there.

Raina Leon: Yeah, Google is real. Or if you were going to ask there should be a consultant fee. Right? Like, oh, “I have this question. But I'm going to give you $300. Can you just answer this one little question?” Yes.

Jasminne Mendez: Or no, I just write the one word, and I'm always like “slavery”, and I just keep it moving. I'm like, How do you speak Spanish?  “Slavery.” You know?

Raina Leon: I, one of the things I love about this poem is that we're in the club and we're also in the mirror. We're in a home space in this in this poem, it's very tight. And you know, when “I 123567 in front of my mirror”, right, that there's this back and forth of the vibrancy and the connection of the song and sound across these different spaces. And then also really rooted in history and calling attention to you know, what used to be New York Ave, what used to be Chocolate City, and like bring this to mind. What used to be the history in the song and bringing that to life. All while bringing, you know, bringing such bounty in the line like “you know what it’s like to become someone’s clave” I want that. Don't we all want that?! Okay!

Jasminne Mendez: “when a mouth swells the biggest ache of your body” okay?

Raina Leon: OKAY? Alright! This is a sexy poem. Sexy poem!

Jasminne Mendez: For me what stood out is I love the way that she really reclaims the word negra. Right. So he whispered negra, my name “bella negra”. “I was always La Negra defended in the lyric”, you know, and because that, that, depending on who says it, and in what context can either be a beautiful loving thing, or you know, it's la negra that can be derogatory, right. And so, you know, I think that the way that she reclaims that word, and really, for lack of a better word makes it sing on the page as well as you know, it makes it her own its power carry, the power that it has, is just really well done. And it's a line that's repeated in the song as well “No Le Pegue a la negra”, la negra, which is something that when I was looking at the poem myself, sorry, the song lyrics myself, it was interesting to me the how it says, In the song or something that I kind of wanted to break apart at one point was “la negra, la negra mi negra” meaning that instead so there's also still that ownership of the woman in that song, even by the, the, you know, the beloved, who's trying to protect her and, and all of that. And so it's always interesting to think about, right?

Raina Leon: And these two things are in conversation with one another, like, it's, it's in the title, like, check out this song. And then I think there is this invitation to have both things side by side, the lyrics as poem, this poem as poem, song, talking to one another, and being alive in that way. So that we too are invited into the dance, were invited into the song, we’re invited into the beauty that is protected.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, and what you're saying makes me think a lot about audience because when in the first stanza, she says, You know what it's like to become someone's clave.

Raina Leon: Do you want to read that again?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: “You know what it's like To become someone's clave”

Raina Leon: done, done.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Well, it says the audience come to the dance floor, you know, and I think it also speaks to people who know without excluding people who don't.

Raina Leon: yes, that that beginning. Oh, wow.

Jasminne Mendez: Because it also speaks right to the layers of like, as a Latina woman who you dance with and how and what does that say about you, right, sort of all of those different complex and conflicting layers of womanhood of being a negra and all of that. Right.?

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Well, do you think that's connected to the last, the penultimate stanza where she says, “you can forgive searching hands when a mouth swells the biggest ache of your body into song”?

Jasminne Mendez: I think so. Yeah. Cuz there's, there's that permission to touch or non permission, right? And depending on who's allowed to touch you based on your marital status, or who you know who you're with, and that kind of thing. Yeah, no, I do. I think it circles back to that.

Raina Leon: Well and I think that Jasmine, you pointing, calling attention to the reclaiming of Negra as well, like, “when a mouth swells the biggest ache of your body”, right? Like how one can be called “Negra” in very different ways. And this mouth is, and these roaming hands, oh, you can forgive them. And this mouth is, is reclaiming allowing you to reclaim this beauty.

Jasminne Mendez: And, and even before “his hands were less tenure, but still I let them roam”. Right. So there's that yeah, for sure. Yeah. For us in our conversation of water, the mouth swells. swells is such a sort of water driven word as well, you know. And so, coming back to that, I think.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: So this poem, for me, articulates some of the history that is in Aracelis’s ocean, right? That's in her sea. And that is in the stories that Alan is also telling it is, I see a connection here, it's like the history that they're both gesturing to, is in conversation with the history of in this poem, as well. And in the Joe Arroyo song.

Jasminne Mendez: Sure, for sure, that history of where we come from how we came from the water, but you know,, transatlantic slave trade, you know, all of that happening, right, and then also the reclaiming of our own bodies of our own experiences, and trying to be in that power, wherever we can.

Raina Leon: Right? And yes, exactly like that, that power of, you know, the larger structures, the historical structures would say, marginalize, would control, would take away with strip away. And, and all three are in the space of like, holding a lot. There's grief, there's longing, there's, there's trauma, there's history, there's like all these different layers. And ultimately, there's still the power to tell the story is still the power in that.

Jasminne Mendez: And think that what this with this poem, too, does so well, is this idea of finding joy and celebrating, right and joy being radical. Right? And that are that are that she's a bella negra. She's a beautiful black woman, right? And there is joy and power in that right in that and then to see yourself, right for for many black women, you know, I'll say for myself to see yourself as beautiful, which is counter to the narrative that you kind of grow up hearing and in many places, and in many ways, that is radical. That is that is a very radical thing to just say, no, “F” y’all like, I'm beautiful, you know, and I'm here to take up space. And this is my name. This is my name. That's my name.

Raina Leon: I am the beautiful black woman “Bella Negra” that's my name. Okay, call my name. So if we were to think about the water, and all that the water does carry, the one thing that we haven't done is mention more names, more people that folks should read. So I know Jasmine, you mentioned Will Perdomo before, I would mention Airea D Matthews, are there other names that were like? Okay, we talked about these three poems, and these three poets, but like, Y'all should have a syllabus.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, definitely. I mean, yes. Dr. La Vieira, Malcolm Friend, Dr. Roberto C. Garcia,

Raina Leon: Ariana Brown.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes  53:49

Dan Matthews.

Jasminne Mendez: Roberto Garcia, Maria Fernanda, of course, Kyle Lopez, Jennifer Maritza McCauley.

Raina Leon: There's so many incredible, incredible writers, Afro Latinx across the diaspora, and some folks who claim it claim that that term and some who pushed against it right, and wherever people are and those slashes of identity that Darrel, like, pointed out to us earlier, still calls attention to still says read still says learn, include, and actively include center.

Jasminne Mendez: Yeah, and I think what the water teaches us with all of this, whether it's our syllabus, our own writing, our identity is this idea of fluidity, right. And that is it is in constant flux and isn't in constant change and transformation, and that the water gives and it takes and I think we should allow ourselves right to, to give and take and to be fluid with those terms with the with how we identify with how we are in one space one day and in another space, the next and how we take up space. And I think that that for me. That's really one of the lessons of the water and what it carries in and what it can teach us

Raina Leon: and we don't have to battle about it, we can just trust that we can ebb and flow and change

Darrel Alejandro Holnes: find the flow, find the flow flow and go with the flow with the flow.

Raina Leon: Be like water like water. Yeah,

Darrel Alejandro Holnes:This is Darrell.

Jasminne Mendez: This is Jasmine

Raina Leon: And this is Raina, and we will see you soon