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- commentary
In late spring 2008, I was working on a short fiction collection and a book of poems; that combination must have sparked this chapbook, because new characters showed up and started talking poetry inside my head. I think now the following elements had to have been in play: I’d published a couple poems with Spanish in them and was thinking maybe I’d do some more + long ago and far away I was a high school teacher + I heard of the PAPERS project, a film about young people in the USA who are “undocumented” + all the time (like everybody else) I was reading and hearing about the horror & terror of contemporary immigration. Those were the raw materials; the chapbook’s structure developed as I wrote. When half a dozen characters had popped up in my head, I understood they were high school students, here in the USA, talking and thinking about law, racism, ethnicity, language, nations and borders. Then, by the end of summer, I began to see the poems, the collection, as a theater piece. I mean, there they all are, talking to and about each other; it was theater even while I was writing it. So now, in addition to every poet’s desire — that you all will read my poems — I want to see & hear the whole book performed in theaters and high schools, in colleges, libraries, and parks.*
- excerpt
Aurelia, talking
You think we all come from Mexico
and up here maybe that’s the most.
But also Guatemala — do you know
where that is? And even Colombia
far away as that is from this huerta
far from these apples and pears.
I wonder if you even know these
other countries are in the world
with you. Like you call your country
America but it isn’t — this place is only
los Estados Unidos, the United States
of America, a chunk of a chunk, a piece
of a piece del norte — ¿comprendes? Do you
know Canada has more land, up there
on top of you? Do you know Brazil
is almost as big, and it’s only one part
of América del Sur, the whole south?
You think you know where you are, where
everybody is and should be. But do you?
- responses
Judith Arcana’s 4th Period English is so wonderful, I feel privileged to have read it, and I wish it were part of every curriculum starting right now. Listen to the voices of Corazón, Cesar, Mikoor, Huynh Chinh, Kathy and Megan, Jamayah, their teacher Ms Solomon and her neighbor Khatereh Jafari — you’ll think you were there in George Washington High School, Anywhere, USA, surrounded by The World. And you were. This is absolutely terrific writing.
— Alicia Ostriker
These poems are amazing. Inside that strange, raw intersection where immigration and Americanism meet, Judith Arcana’s new collection brings to life a whole population in a typical American high school. Her own strong voice disappears as she seemingly channels Adelita and Vicente, Tiffany and Jason, teachers and tíos, parents and visiting profesores. The stories that emerge here are vulnerable, confused, angry, outraged, tender, and, above all, deeply human.
— Diana Rico
Judith Arcana invites us into an urgent listening exercise that leaves us yearning to befriend the real Verónicas, Tyrones and Ashleys who have inspired these poems. This polyphonic collection is a labor of love and compassion, making readers aware of the painful ways our young people struggle between the myriad borders of this world.
— Alicia Partnoy
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