Focus on Technique:
Poetry as a Form of Racial Expression
As a young child I felt so alone. My father a white Jewish redneck and my
mother a Puerto Rican Catholic gave me no place to really belong. In college I found my place in poetry. I started with Pedro Pietri’s “Puerto Rican
Obituary” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCD0IsZ4HLI and Laviera’s land mark poem AmerRican which
expounded on the purpose of being both American and still maintaining your Boriqua presence.
Rocking people’s world when it comes to poetry and race does
not only affect the minority but also those who are not affected by race. For example W.E.B DuBois, “Souls of Black
Folk” was critically panned in day and so was his career but now looking on the
civil rights movement his work was both inspiring and game changing.
My country tis of thee,
Late land of slavery,
Of
thee I sing.
Land where my father’s pride
Slept where my mother died,
From every mountain side
Let
freedom ring!
My native country thee
Land of the slave set free,
Thy
fame I love.
I love thy rocks and rills
And o’er thy hate which chills,
My heart with purpose thrills,
To rise
above.
Let laments swell the breeze
And wring from all the trees
Sweet
freedom’s song.
Let laggard tongues awake,
Let all who hear partake,
Let Southern silence quake,
The
sound prolong.
Our fathers’ God to thee
Author of Liberty,
To
thee we sing
Soon may our land be bright,
With Freedom’s happy light
Protect us by Thy might,
Great
God our King.
Another groundbreaking and notable artist is our Gloria Anazuldua. Many people think of her as strictly a
theorist of queer/latino/women’s theory.
When students are asked to read “Borderlands/La Frontera” we focus on
the theory and forget that the heart of her work is the poetry that is written
both in her native tongue of Spanish and English. It is the heart of why she became a
theorist. She wanted people to
understand what truly was the heart of what the poetry was.
To live in the Borderlands
means you
are neither hispana india negra espanola
ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps
while carrying all five races on your back
not knowing which side to turn to, run from;
To live in the Borderlands
means knowing
that the india in you, betrayed for 500 years,
is no longer speaking to you,
that mexicanas call you rajetas,
that denying the Anglo inside you
is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;
Cuando vives en la frontera
people walk through you, the wind steals your voice,
you're a burra, buey, scapegoat,
forerunner of a new race,
half and half - both woman and man, neither -
a new gender;
To live in the Borderlands
means to
put chile in the borscht,
eat whole wheat tortillas,
speak tex-mex with a brooklyn accent;
be stopped by la migra at the border checkpoints;
Living in the Borderlands
means you fight hard to
resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle,
the pull of the gun barrel,
the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;
In the Borderlands
you are the battleground
where enemies are kin to each other;
you are at home, a stranger,
the border disputes have been settled
the volley of shots have shattered the truce
you are wounded, lost in action
dead, fighting back;
To live in the Borderlands
means
the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off
your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart
pound you pinch you roll you out
smelling like white bread but dead;
To survive the Borderlands
you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.
Through teaching students how to live in their race seeking
their own unique voice and still embracing and seeking other racial poetry will
lead to greater understanding. It will
open eyes and help those seeking answers in our society towards racial
understanding.
Both poems came from poetryfoundation.org
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