In Lak'ech Ala K'in | I am Another You. You are Another Me

I'm spending the morning in high school. Everything is much smaller than I remember ... except me.

La Clase

My friend Jackie Madrigal pioneered a US Latino Literature class at Shawnee Mission North High School in Mission, Kansas. She invited Chato Villalobos and myself to be guest speakers to help put some faces to Latino literature and to talk about the Latino Writers Collective and our writing processes. Both Chato and I are honored to be asked. Her curriculum is thoughtful and hits all the major notes in the rather large genre.

As this day grew closer, my social anxiety started to wrap itself around me. In fact, last night I spent some time thinking about how I could get out of this gig. Chato could do the presentation himself. He's a police officer and therefore automatically much more interesting, right? Besides I have to work that afternoon and there's a chance I could be late. My tummy still kinda hurts from when I was sick last week. Also my car is pretty old and I don't like to drive it more than necessary ...

'Tending Hands' on Public Radio International

Me and my dad around 1970

Here is an expanded version of my farmworker post, 'Tender Hands' featured on my other blog, The Last Year

'When I was 10 years old, I began working regularly with my family as a migrant farmworker. I'd done it previously, but only on Saturdays, to help them catch up when tornado warnings ended work early or when the patches of weeds were particularly thick. The summer of my fourth grade year, it became my full-time job.'

Read the entire essay at Public Radio International. 

I’m thankful to PRI’s Anglilee Shah who read my original post and reached out to me to feature it on PRI.

My Ferguson Story

I didn't want to leave the house today.

After last night's news of the failed successful non-indictment of Michael Brown's killer, I just didn't want to see people going about their lives. I didn't want to hear helpless sighs and patronizing conversations about healing or moving forward. I didnt want to hear people's mouths shooting details of the riots or debating the character of a dead boy.

But I had an engagement at the Kansas City Art Institute and I promised a friend that I'd attend. So I dragged my brown ass to downtown KCMO and roamed the campus like someone's lost father as I looked for the venue.

Inside the small auditorium students gathered displaying their work, sharing food, and ... they were living. They were laughing and having fun. It kinda bothered me. I mean, how dare they?

As I looked closer I could see the students were Latino. The art was Latino. The food was Latino. My cheeks started to burn and my chest tightened.

I realized this is where I needed to be. I needed to be around the young creative energy of my own culture, not locked away in my house Tweeting and posting my outrage.

As part if the event, the organizers asked my friend Maria and I to read a few poems. Not having brought my notebook, I briefly panicked but then I remembered I'd uploaded some poems to my Google Drive for just such an occasion.

I read one of my fat poems, I'm Big and I'm Brown All the Way Down; my poem about being the first to go to college, F1RST; and my signature poem, Madre de los Campos.

After that poem, which deals with my frustration as a young kid at being a farmworker, I wanted to talk to about Ferguson. I needed to talk about it. I was experiencing the same frustration as the boy in my poem but at the same time I felt the safety and comfort of the room.

We talked about our art. We talked about how we long to create beauty and joy through our work but that there is also beauty in pain. We have a gift and sometimes that gift requires sitting in our pain, processing it, and putting it through the artist's lens.

It means taking what's inside our hearts, inside our heads and on our tongues and putting it in words, on canvas, or in clay -- that's our ability, our gift. It's our super power. In doing so, we can help others process their feelings. We can stand as examples to young people on creative ways to deal with these difficult emotions that make so many turn to, and live in, rage or to simply shut down -- shut down like I wanted to do hours earlier.

I don't know what will come from the meeting today. Hopefully it will be the beginning of new partnerships and collaborations for area Latinos in the arts.

But for now, for this moment, it's what I needed. I needed to be among brown and black faces who connected in a safe space surrounded by and sharing our creative energy.

That's my Ferguson story.

5to de Mayo

A few weeks ago, an foreign language instructor at Johnson County Community College reminded me that it's time to dig out my Cinco de Mayo poems since the holiday was approaching. She surprised me by saying that she uses them in her classes.

So here's my love/hate relationship with Cinco de Mayo ...

Sink-O duh My-O 

I hate that the birthdays of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta
are followed by the embarrassment that is
Sink-O duh My-O.

I hate that many young Latinos will mistakenly toast Mexican Independence
four months early
and on the wrong day.

I hate that shirtless frat boys will host Taco and Tequila parties
where they’ll wear giant sombreros and fake mustaches
and that the women will wear Hawaiian leis and bikinis.

I hate that from the weekend before to the weekend after I will avoid Mexican restaurants
as they reduce our cuisine to cheesy combination platters
and jalapeño eating contests.

I hate that when I walk through the grocery store,
someone will ask me what’s the best brand of tortillas
or which salsa is more authentic.

I hate that someone outside my culture will speak Spanish to me and,
when I don’t respond in Spanish,
will lecture me on how I’m losing my heritage.

I hate that teachers beat my parents for speaking Spanish in school.
And now some yahoo will get in my face to tell me I should learn it
for the one day a year it seems we’re allowed to speak it.

I hate that I must smile through this ignorance, because if I don’t,
I’m an Angry Mexican reinforcing yet another stereotype
by which they judge us.

I hate Sink-O duh My-O.

  * * * * * * * * * 

Cinco de Mayo

I love that summer begins when Maracas shake,
guitars strum and trumpets blast
on Cinco de Mayo.

I love that it initiates the emancipated days of summer
like Junteenth, Gay Pride, Fourth of July
and closes with Hispanic Heritage Month which includes the real Mexican Independence Day.

I love the sound of stomping heels
and the ruffling fabric of whirling dresses
as young folklorico dancers fulfill the tradition of siblings and elders.

I love the smell of roasted peppers,
the sizzle of beef
and how the breeze carries chili powder instead of pollen across the fiesta.

I love that booths offer everything from homemade tacos to HIV testing to la Avon
and that everyone understands the celebration comes from the gathering of community
not the authenticity of the products.

I love that Latino kitsch like the paintings of the Matador and the Señorita,
calendars featuring the Aztec warrior carrying the maiden, and wooden puppets
release childhood memories and reveal cultural meaning.

I love the rhythm that flows from Spanish spoken without shame
on the one day a year everyone wishes they were fluent.
El que sabe dos idiomas vale por dos.

I love that instead of apologizing for our accent, our skin, our hair, our shape,
we celebrate, appreciate and validate our existence
despite the revolución’s evolución into the Mexican St. Patrick’s Day.

I love Cinco de Mayo.

Originally published by Present Magazine in 2009 

and  featured on the Facebook page, Poets Against SB1070 in 2011.

Healing Circle

After the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference where I facilitated a session on the Latino Writers Collective's Migrant Youth Writers Workshop, I traveled to Orlando Florida to visit two of my three sisters.

I attended a meditation session at my sister Mylinda's yoga studio, Altamonte Springs Yoga. In the session, we visualized our energy flow and dismantled energy blocks. As I focused on the energy flow in my arms, I kept thinking of the work we used to do in the fields as migrant farmworkers.

You see, arms and legs are tools. They work until they ache. They blister. They burn. They lift. They push. They sweat. They scar.

Though I've been exploring my past as a farmworker, I thought only my mind kept those memories. I have a clearer understanding of how my past still affects my physical being.

The next day I worked with my sister, Deb, on her Latina Leadership Conference. We took a break to deliver some food to a local food bank. We didn't really know where we were going. She remembered the last time my father visited that he mentioned a local community center. So, off we drove hoping to find it and to ask if they needed food donations.

Well, we couldn't find it. Maybe it was one of those situations where dad mistook a community center for a donut shop. Then a building with the word "farmworker" on it caught my sister's attention. We pulled into the Catholic Diocese's Office for Farmworker Ministry.

The HOPE CommUnity Center
formerly the Office for Farmworker Ministry

Like many Gay Latinos, I have a respect/disrespect relationship with the church. So, I wasn't sure about the "ministry" aspect of this organization. However the farmworker focus meant I could (temporarily) suspend my objections to the church in order to make sure food got to the people who needed it.

I looked at the reception desk with stacks of fliers spread across or taped to the front advertising basic computer skills classes, youth groups, tax help, local medical clinics and I knew this was the right place.

We unloaded my sister's SUV full of food that helped supply the emergency food pantry.

It felt good.

My arms that once worked in the fields now delivered food to those who still do. My hands that held tools -- hell, they were tools -- now write about that life.

We talked to the director to ask how we could establish a relationship with the organization. We're going to sit down with her next week to discuss it.

I know what I'd like to do -- a writer's workshop for the migrant youth.

AWP12 Day 4: Migrant Poet

I grabbed my suitcase and started packing for tomorrow's flight out of Chicago. I thought about how long four days seemed when I first arrived and how this final day seemed to pass so quickly. 

Last night the Latino Writers Collective and Proyecto Latina sponsored an After-Hours Salon reading at Columbia College. 

I read two poems about my parents. The first, Madre de los Campos, is one of my favorites. It describes my experiences working as a migrant farmworker and child laborer. 

The second poem, Sangre de mi Padre, examines my father's work at a meat packing plant. That poem took on a new meaning for me because I'd just learned my father suffered a small stroke hours earlier. My sister said he seemed to be fine but the doctor wanted to keep him overnight to make sure there were no other complications.

Well, I guess everything turned out fine because today as I prepared for the session I was to facilitate, he texted me to ask how long to grill a steak. 

Yeah, just kind of process that for a moment ...

Miguel and Yolanda (Nieves) after the After Hours reading

That brings us to today and the reason I came to this year's Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference -- the Migrant Youth Writers Workshop. 

After the Migrant Youth Writers Workshop session

For those of you who know me, let me just reassure you that I did not cry. No, not this time.

For those of you who don't know me, it's always a struggle for me not to break when I talk about the work we do with migrant youth. As much as I try not to, I usually end up crying. 

I almost did break but I took a deep breath and tried not to let my emotions get ahead of my words. However another panelist did, and that touched me. It also moved the audience. So there were some tears after all, which now I accept as a good thing.

I never thought my life would come back to those days when I was a migrant farmworker. I worked so hard for so many years to banish that part of my life. Yet there I stood at a national writer's conference talking about it, telling writers how they can help -- asking them to help and they responded.

In a strange sort of way, grown up Miguel and little farmworker Miguel are working together helping each other, giving voice to one another, and trying to make a difference in the lives of other migrant youth. I can look back on my life at the time when I really needed help as a migrant kid and I can see that these young people are at that moment in their lives. They need help -- even if that help is just acknowledging their stories.

Miguel talks with a migrant youth/poet at the 2011 writers workshop.