Marcelo E. Fuentes: Introduction

INTRODUCTION

No year in recent memory has been fuller of surprises and uncertainties than this 2020. In a similar way, this year’s Voces Latinas shaped itself without any predetermined genre, topic, or plan. In spite of this, most of the contributions tended to coalesce around three main areas and one of them deserved its own section, as I will soon explain. The first section, “Identities,” comprises introspective texts that reveal any singular, unitary identity as a fiction. Instead, these three poems reveal identity as something that breaks down, divides itself, or multiplies, depending on our interactions with the world and other people. Melissa Tudela’s “Mapa del alma” precisely examines our inner diversity: not only the separation between the one we are and the one others see, but also the gap between who we are and who we want to be, which additionally can be multiple: “Quiero ser muchas cosas; quiero soñar” (“I want to be many things; I want to dream”). We are legion, all of us and always. Evelyn Cordova’s “La soledad” is about the unique solitude of living with somebody who only makes us feel lonelier. If love can complement and enrich our identity, the lack of love can instead break us, make us smaller, make us feel lost and desperate, “como estar en un laberinto sin salida” (“as if I were in a labyrinth without an exit”). Genesis Amaro’s “Identidad/ Identity” explores another fractured inner world, this time not because of differing expectations or lack of love, but because of the conflicting coexistence of different nationalities, languages, and cultures. Faced with a world that requires her to choose an identity, the speaker defiantly declares in two languages: “I am my own culture, / A culture that speaks both tongues. / A culture that is proud to be a mix.” The second section of this volume, “Love and Family,” sings to that rapturous force that connects us to each other, especially in its strongest and most visceral manifestation: the love between mother and children. Karla Santos’s “Amor de madre” describes that relationship lyrically and also realistically: this love has ups and downs, moments of strain and failure, which do not diminish its beauty at all. Quite the opposite, it is precisely this love’s complexity what transforms it into something “real y puro como el viento” (“real and pure like the wind”). Marisol Rivera’s “Hace 3 años” is about an adolescent mother who suffers fear and uncertainty until she discovers that her pregnancy and motherhood are capable of arousing the solidarity of an entire family and illuminating their existence, to the point that “nuestra vida no podría ser mejor” (“our life could not be better"). Bianca Ventura’s “Qué hermosa es mi madre” is an ode to a single and hardworking mother, who through countless sacrifices, including “sus tres trabajos y sus noches en vela” (“her three jobs and her sleepless nights”), becomes her children’s mother, father, and best friend, in addition to being their “más

grande tesoro” (“biggest treasure”). A third section, “Places and Characters,” looks outwards and focuses on the observation of other people and spaces. Rocío Roldán’s “El farsante” is a simultaneously furious and joyous invective against a former lover who proved himself to be a phony gaslighter. His abandonment, which once caused pain, is now revealed as a hidden blessing that ultimately brought the speaker a newfound freedom, confidence, and happiness: “Piensas que me quebraste, pero en realidad me hiciste crecer” (“You think you broke me, but you actually made me grow.”) Elizabeth Roche’s “El cigarro” imaginatively analyzes the peculiar relationship of love, friendship, and dependence between a smoker and his addiction. This unhealthy liaison, which alienates the smoker from his family and threatens him with death, ends with a breakup that separates him from “su fiel amigo don cigarro” (“his faithful friend Mr. Cigar”) and happily reunites him with his children. Widnelia Avila’s “El barrio” is an enchanted and enchanting description of her childhood’s neighborhood in Puerto Rico as a familiar, playful, and magical environment, full with children who enjoyed “como juguetes todo lo que la naturaleza nos brindaba”(“everything that nature gave us as a toy”), including trees, water, and stars. As it usually happens with paradises, this one has been lost forever, leaving only a few loved ones and memories. Finally, the fourth and last section, “A New World,” includes only one text, an early example of what will surely become soon an entire new genre of writings about how the 2020’s pandemic irrevocably transformed our lives and the world, while exposing us to an unknown future that can generate both fear and hope. Sabrina Mezzina’s “Hace un tiempo atrás” remembers the initial weeks of the epidemic, when our normal lives were suddenly upended by news of the infection growing around the world, apocalyptic fears, irrational panic-buying, and our first acquaintance with the volatility that now permeates most of our routines and plans. Among the chaos, the speaker still finds some place for compassion and concern for others when an old worker at a parking lot approaches her with his anguished question, which since then has become the same unanswerable question for the entire world: “¿qué va ser de nosotros?” ("what will become of us?") A global crisis like the present one showcases that fundamental condition of our lives that Buddhism has called dukkha: often translated as “suffering,” dukkha is more exactly the constant stress, discontent, and impermanence that characterizes our existence. We own nothing and nothing lasts long. However, that same instability is what impels us to write poetry, compose music, and love other people: in the middle of darkness, we are looking for light and, most of times, it is us our duty to light the match and build the bonfire. Suffering is not a sentence, but an invitation to overcome it; silence is there for us to fill it with our (sometimes sad, sometimes happy, always beautiful and moving) songs and stories, just like our contributors have done in the next pages.

Marcelo E. Fuentes

Editor of Voces Latinas

1. IDENTIDADES

Al fin y al cabo, al recordarse, no hay persona que no se encuentre consigo misma. Es lo que nos está pasando ahora, salvo que somos dos. ¿No querés saber algo de mi pasado, que es el porvenir que te espera?

(All people find themselves, after all, when they remember themselves. It’s what is happening to us now, except that we are two. Don’t you want to know something of my past, which is the future awaiting you?)

Jorge Luis Borges, “El otro.”

Melissa Tudela was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Quintana Roo, Mexico, where she lived for many years before moving to the United States. Melissa is starting her second year as a Spanish major at New Jersey City University.

Mapa del alma

¿Quién soy yo? La pregunta que me agrede. Está el yo que el mundo quiere contemplar, y está también el yo que quiero sembrar. Pero ¿quién soy yo? Que mi rastro quede.

Los brazos que la oscuridad concede, me lanzo a ellos para mi sombra enfrentar. Quiero ser muchas cosas; quiero soñar. Pues abajo no hay más mal que ya no herede.

Ella soy yo y yo soy ella, duda no queda. El proceso de reconocimiento que toda mi vida en práctica queda.

El camino que brilla y me remeda, es la forma de mi alma que consiento; mi entendimiento es mi ego y mi vereda.