[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Alicia Rosas.
I'm the Interim Vice President of Student Services at Chaffey
College as well as the Executive Director of Equity Outreach
and Communications.
We are very excited for the College's Center
for Social Justice and the Lavender Coalition
to present today's speaker.
He is a nationally acclaimed poet and public speaker,
Yosimar Reyes.
Buenas tardes.
Hi, everybody.
Buenas tardes.
Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to be here.
My name is Yosimar Reyes.
I'm a poet and I'm a writer.
And yeah.
I'm going to be sharing a couple of poems and a little bit
about my work and basically my process,
how I'm developing the method behind the work that I have.
I'm going to be starting with one piece, which
I write a lot in Spanglish, so you'll get it.
Just look for the context clues en el español.
And I know that being that this is-- right now I
think we're celebrating.
I guess I've been doing a lot of events about Latino Heritage
Month.
And also a lot of the work that I'm trying to do
is kind of bringing in like the intersections of awareness
also because, if you can't tell, I'm a little queer.
So this poems is titled Lo Que Soy, What I Am.
And it goes like this.
"This is my nature.
The truth in my heart.
The breath in my lungs.
Yo soy the one you fear.
The one that got away.
Soy el único que se te fue.
Yo soy el hijo que nunca será padre,
el nieto que nunca será husband.
I am the near and the far of Earth and sky,
el sol y la luna.
Soy everything that is in between entre el hombre
y la mujer.
Soy el ser que por tu ignorancia no quieres reconocer.
I am the one you define what hate, the one that--
labels manages to reclaim his name.
Yo soy dualidad.
Y aunque digas que esta es la misma canción, el mismo poema,
te repitoq que nosotros seguimos hablando de compasión.
Yo soy de fuego y tierra, de mares que liberan de
muertes silenciosas.
Yo soy la muerte que me deseas.
I'm both destruction and reparations
of freedom in cages.
I'm the bird that still springs priases.
Y con todas mis fuerzas, te digo que tu odio me libera porque
más que espíritu enjaulado, yo soy el poder de la conciencia."
I also know you're like, what was that?
But, you know, we out here casting spells.
[LAUGHS]
So yeah.
A little bit about my upbringing.
So I started writing poetry when I was 16.
And I started writing poetry when I was 16
because we know when you're 16, the world is unraveling
before you and there's no-- and I grew up in [INAUDIBLE]..
There was no language to articulate my predicament.
I just remember being 16 and being really aware that, one,
I'm living in the hood, I'm coming
from working class immigrant parents.
Two, we were super poor, right?
And then, on top of that, I was an immigrant.
And I happened to be undocumented.
Well, I'm undocumented.
So I happened to be undocumented at 16.
And on top of being undocumented,
I was also coming out into terms of my sexuality
and being queer.
So not only am I poor, undocumented, and gay.
I'm like Lord Jesus, throw me a bone here.
Give me something to work with because these are all like--
I'm in the negatives right now and I need
to be in the positives, right?
But what was interesting that at 16 I
thought that those were like my biggest hurdles and my greatest
challenges, right?
Because I didn't have examples of people
that made it out of these predicaments
or these situations.
But now that I'm older as a poet and as a writer that explores
these things, I realized that these kind of conditionings
were actually my biggest assets because, yes, I may not
have access to institutional power
and I may not had access to resources and all of that.
But now that I'm older, I realize
I have something that a lot of people lack,
and that's cultural power.
I have the power to tell stories that resonate with the larger
demographic of populations.
And you know there's that myth that as writers we
have to go find a story.
Like you'll hear this kind of story
where the writer is like, I need to travel to find a story,
I need to go all the way to Mexico,
I need to going to go on a retreat to find this story.
And I always joke around that the beautiful thing
about growing up with trauma, if there is such thing as beauty
in growing up with trauma, is that you
don't have to travel too far.
You can just get a mirror and look in the mirror
and start writing about all the scars that you carry.
And then you'll end up eventually having an anthology
and a book collection of poems.
So I think if anything, I learned
to realize that actually all these things that I thought
were--
that people told me were bad were actually
my biggest things.
And I think that happens to a lot of queer people.
I think as queers, we're so damn powerful
that people try to rob you and murder your spirit as you
come up because they don't want you to tap into it.
And too bad for you all because I'm tapped in, OK?
This next poem that I'm going to read is titled 1991.
We arrived in this country in 1991.
But like many immigrants, I feel like I joke around
that there needs to be somebody that makes like an app that
gives Yelp reviews on which states in the country
are the most xenophobic so the immigrants coming are like, OK,
we should not go there.
Because I feel like when you're migrating to the United States
we come to this idea that we're all coming to Disneyland
and we're going to meet Mickey Mouse and he's going to hug us.
And the reality is that you show up
and it's definitely very difficult
to make it here especially with the laws and the propositions
that we have.
So I kind of thought about that.
And if you know nothing about the early 90s,
it was an interesting time, right?
The early 90s--
I feel like the early 90s was very interesting
in the way that, especially in California,
being that there's so many laws that are happening.
In 1994, we have prop 187 which was a huge kind of movement
and kind of mobilized a lot of Latinos
because it was a proposition that
advocated for undocumented people
to not have resources to public programs such as public schools
or public hospitals.
And it was like a direct attack against our community, right?
So I wrote this poem called 1991.
It goes like this.
"We did not always have English on our tongues.
When we arrived, everything was new to us.
The cold weather, the tall buildings, the concrete roads,
street names, bus routes, and stores.
We made sense of this new place as best possible.
We walked in groups, packs of dark Mexicans
walking into stores.
At the mall, we stood awkwardly taking pictures
under big brand name stores.
We smiled to show the people in our town how far we made it.
We could not pronounce our order at a McDonald's, so we
used our fingers to adjust their numbers.
We felt small, lost in this big city.
No one wanted to hire us.
So we swallowed our pride we rose before the sun,
stood outside of the Home Depot begging for work.
They laughed at us, salivated at our desperation,
exploited our necessity.
We came home to lay our living room
floors in crowded apartments infested with roaches.
After rent and bills were paid, we sent money Gram's home.
Over the phone, over phone calls we lied,
told how beautiful San Jose is.
Our throats burned with our own deception.
When we crossed the others over, they hated us.
Why didn't we warn them of this nightmare?"
And this kind of talks about the rude awakening
of the American dream, right?
Oftentimes for us, it's really realizing
that the American dream sometimes it's
not what it's meant to be.
I'm going to read this next piece.
I'm really out here casting spells, people.
You really, really wouldn't be thinking,
but every poem is a manifestation.
But I wrote this piece because about two years ago there
was an image that went viral where this father from Central
America was crossing the border and he
put his daughter on the back of his shirt
as he swam across the river.
And sadly, they didn't make it.
Right?
And then there's this powerful image of them laying there,
their bodies there.
And it went viral over the internet.
And one of the things that I often talk about
is how often we make martyrs out of people that
don't necessarily want to become martyrs, especially when we're
living with the Black Lives Matter movement right now
and we're witnessing death and it's just
coming across our screens.
And I always wonder why does it take death
to trigger someone into action.
Why does somebody have to die for us
to believe that we're living in a place that's killing folks,
right?
And I felt like something-- what hurt me
the most is that I, of course, they always told
me not to read the comments.
But I read some of the comments of the picture
and I couldn't believe that somebody would sit there
on their computer and type, if they
would have done it the legal way,
they would have been still here.
And to put myself in that situation--
I don't know.
I just felt a little like, damn, you
have to have some sort of spiritual bankruptcy.
There is something definitely wrong with you
to sit there and think that way.
And as an undocumented person, oftentimes we
get this idea that I want to convince
you to like undocumented people, to be nice to immigrants,
you know?
And I always start off with my talks like this.
Like I don't debate about immigration.
I'm not going to debate about why
I don't have papers anymore.
Like honestly, you can Google that.
I can't do that for you.
And I'm not going to debate with you.
Honestly, I always say if you're somebody
that believes in caging children and separating families,
if you're somebody that believes in not treating people
with dignity because of a social security number,
there's nothing I can tell you or a poem or a story,
or I can't tell you how hard my life has
been to convince you of that.
That's some deep spiritual quest that you
need to embark with the God you pray to or go to meditation
or go to yoga and figure it out because I can't help you out.
So I wrote this poem called A Spell.
It's a little intense but you'll get the point.
"What it's more heartbreaking about bearing witness
to children in cages, a drowned father and a daughter,
another ICE raid, another tweet about not providing toothpaste
or soap to children in detention,
is the reality that this country breeds citizens
with no humanity.
How spiritually bankrupt must one
be to ignore, to sit there and say that you
have done it illegally.
May the ghosts of our people come back
like a storm, a heavy wind, an earthquake, and fall
upon the homes of those with venom on their lips.
May the ghosts of our people remind them who God really is.
You can't stop us because we do not die in vain.
A storm is coming and you cannot hide from the rain."
So that's-- whenever they arrest me or come for me,
I'm going to be shouting that poem out from the top
of my lungs.
You know like in that movie The Color Purple
where Steely reveals herself, until you do right by me,
everything will go--
that's basically the moment.
[LAUGHS]
You've got to keep that energy.
I'm going to read this next one.
This one-- let me see if I pulled it up.
But one of the things that I'm trying
to uncover with myself in understanding,
I try to use a lot of humor in my work
because I feel like when you're able to laugh
at your misfortunes or able to laugh at all the hard things,
that sometimes you have to laugh in order to keep from crying.
And when you're able to laugh, it
gives you some sort of levity.
[PHONE CHIMES]
So this piece, this is from my one-man show, Prieto.
Right?
It goes like this.
So it goes like this.
"I don't know where you've been for the past 10 years,
but immigration is a hot topic, it's trendy, it is in.
Being a citizen is so overrated.
If you want free press, you should bring your social
and be a rebel like me.
Live your life as undocumented.
I have no memory of my crossing.
For the sake of this show, I will entertain you
with something more dramatic because, really,
who is going to check public records?
You can't.
We're undocumented.
It's an August night in 1991.
My abuela is the mastermind behind this whole plan.
My abuelo, like always, is drunk.
My mother crossed two years prior.
So she finally saved enough money to send for us.
She hired a coyote.
For those of you who are culturally impaired,
I don't mean a coyote, I mean a human smuggler
to get us across.
When I say human smuggler, I'm sure you're imagining
a character out of Narcos or some badass drug cartel leader,
but our smuggler was a señora.
[PHONE CHIME]
Straight up, this lady looked like she
would be selling tamales out of the corner of 24th and Mission.
So don't typecast immigrants, because that sweet old lady
selling you those delicious tamales
could be a human smuggler.
We were a group of 13, mostly men except for my abuela
and my brother and me.
Before crossing, my abuelo had a going away a party of sorts,
so he's crossing the border hung over as fuck.
I know what you're thinking.
How irresponsible.
But when you think about it, when
you're about to leave your country, your whole land,
your whole life behind just to come to a place
you know nothing about, what else is
there to do than to drink up?
Lord knows if I'm about to cross the desert like some fear
factor challenge, I'm going to need me a couple of shots.
Once we cross the desert, it's when things got interesting.
Being that I'm three years old, my abuela's main concern
is me crying and giving this away this whole Operation
Wetback.
They have to stick the four of us under the backseat of a car,
so it's some human Tetris type shit.
These adults think that the best preventative measure
to avoid me making any noise is to give me NyQuil.
So that's the basic plot of my migration story.
I didn't even want to be here.
I was drugged, kidnapped, and brought here.
Eat your heart out, life time.
You would think that this would be
enough dramatic details to convince conservatives
of my humanity.
But they just need a little more.
They always want a little more.
Cue in the Sarah Mccallan animal cruelty commercial.
This is Yosimar Reyes.
He's a DACA beneficiary.
Yosimar is a dreamer.
When he crossed the border at three years old,
he did not know he was breaking the law.
He thought he was coming to Disneyland.
Call your Congress people now and save Yosimar's life.
Truth be told, I feel like I thought
I was a dog getting deported, conservatives
would be outraged.
I could see the headlines now.
All dogs go to heaven, free them all, cages are cruel.
If there were masses of dogs being deported on the daily,
immigration detention centers would be abolished by now.
When reporters asked me, what was it like?
Did you have to ride La Bestia to get here with the drug
cartels right behind you?
Please tell us more about the violence.
My scholarship response is always,
it was a dark, gloomy morning, typical in a Mexican morning
because we're such a developing country that the sun doesn't
shine.
My abuela heard a whisper in the wind
and it was La Virgen de Guadalupe.
My daughter, you are to migrate north.
This child of yours is the Messiah.
Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he is the chosen one.
It would be best if you take him to the United States.
This child is on a mission to denounce imperialism
and eradicate white supremacy.
Only he can stop this, so pack your things and go.
So at the age of three years old,
I packed my belongings in cardboard boxes
tied by shoe strings and I began my pilgrimage."
[LAUGHS]
So this is kind of how I imagined my origin
story of how I got here.
Let's see.
I'm going to skip to the--
OK.
Right here.
So we ended up coming to San Jose in 1991.
And we landed in the hood.
And we landed in this apartment complex.
A lot of times, you hear the narratives of people
like, I was the only undocumented person,
I couldn't tell anybody.
That's not my story.
Everybody on my block lived the same way, right?
I know everybody.
I was in by myself.
I knew everybody.
So this is like us landing in my neighborhood.
"The only fancy thing about the Taylor Oaks apartments
was its name?
There really needs to be a culture
study about how the projects have
these scenic pastoral names.
Think about it.
The Acorn Projects, Sleepy Meadows, Sunnyside Apartments.
I have a theory that the more scenic the name,
the more roaches the apartment comes with.
Undocumented people were the original inventors of Airbnbs.
I swear some white dude stole that shit from us
and started a whole company.
Because growing up, my abuela used
to rent the two bedrooms in our apartment
and we stayed in the living room.
The only difference is that these immigrants did not
leave Yelp reviews.
Later, when I attended San Francisco State,
I found that hippie white kids called that shit
a co-op or communal living.
All that Virginia Woolf shit she was talking about,
for women to write, she needs a room of her own money
and a room of her own.
If only Virginia Woolf had told that shit to my abuela,
I'd have no space to think much less write.
On top of the fact that we sit in the living room,
my abuela had the pride of starting a soup kitchen.
Call it a niche market, but this old lady was smart.
She knew that most of the apartments in our buildings
were rented out by migrant men, most of them
from the states like Puebla, Guerrero, or Oaxaca,
you know, the dark Mexicans.
Since most worked all day and didn't have someone
to cook for them, she took on the job.
Their bodies crowded our small living room.
And these folks would take up the liberties,
like changing the channel to their favorite novela.
Basically, my house was an INS hotspot.
Had we been raided, we would have ran like the cucarachas
when you spray actual Raid on the areas they congregate in.
Oh my God, you get it?
Raid, INS raid, cucaracha Raid.
Mexicans are the cucarachas this country wants to get rid of.
Guess what, though?
Cucarachas survived the extinction of dinosaurs.
So that's us, bitch.
Resilient.
Another fun fact.
INS stands for Immigration Naturalization Services, which
post 9/11 we now call ICE.
The men would tell stories about the families they left behind.
It started with one asking me to read a letter he
got from his employer.
And soon into me running my own little EOP office
for these damn immigrants.
Oyes, ¿por qué no me enseñas inglés?
What do you want to know?
A ver, ¿cómo se dice yo lo puedo hacer más barato?
It's easy.
Se dice, I can do it for cheaper.
¿Y cómo se escribe?
I have nothing better to do, so I take up the challenge,
I grab some markers, and I begin teaching basic sentences.
It's super easy.
Hola, mi nombre es, se pronuncia, hello, my name
is, y se escribe, hello, my name is.
Diez dólares la hora y trabajo rápido, se pronuncia,
10 dollars per hour, I work fast.
Y se escribe, 10 dollars per hour, I work fast.
I was like a little Michelle Pfeiffer
with my cohort of immigrant dangerous minds.
Every day I have a new sentence, I write words,
and like the marker in unison, I have them repeated.
Initially, they stumble but eventually
they get the hang of it.
I learn how to make resumes and talk
to their potential employers on the phone.
Yes, this is Mr. Reyes on the line.
Oh, Fernando.
Yes, he's an excellent worker.
He's punctual, has great attitude, never complains,
you will not regret hiring him.
Quique is the most persistent in wanting to learn English.
He says he's going to pay me if I keep teaching him,
so I steal extra language art sheets
from my school for my lessons.
The thing about being a translator at 10
or 11 years old is that these immigrants
forget that you're also a kid.
Translating at the doctor was particularly hard.
How do you say urinary tract infection in español?
Abuelita, dice el señor que tienes una urinary tract
infection.
¿Una qué?
A UTI, abuela.
No sé cómo se dice en español.
¿Cómo que no sabes cómo se dice?
Para eso vas a la escuela.
But grandma, I'm in fourth grade.
This man went to medical school.
Calling the cops what's the worst.
You know how traumatizing it is to call
the cops on your own uncle while he's
standing right next to you?
9-1-1, what's your emergency?
Hi, my tía told me to call the cops because she doesn't speak
English and she said she wants to put my uncle in jail.
What's the problem?
Tía, dice la operadora que cúal es el problema?
Excuse me, ma'am, my tía says she wants to put him in jail
because he's a deadbeat dad and a cheater.
I'm so sorry, tío.
Ma'am, my tío says that he'd rather be in jail than spend
one more day in this miserable marriage.
Ma'am, do you know how long this is going to be?
I have to finish my book report for school tomorrow.
In fifth grade, we read The Diary of Anne Frank
and I thought to myself, if this home girl could
write about living in the attic hiding from the Nazis, shit,
I got stories about living in the living
room hiding from INS.
My initial journal entries were about my daily annoyances,
kids I hated in school, abuelo's [INAUDIBLE]
with my abuela, the fucking roaches.
And eventually, I began writing about my secret crushes.
I knew there was danger in writing,
so I would go to my secret place to write, the bathroom.
I would lock the door, sit in a toilet, and I began.
Dear God, I have recently watched The Color Purple,
so I got the idea from Sally to write letters to God.
Dramatic, I know.
But that shit is an effective writing prompt.
Dear God, I think I'm gay.
But I don't know what gay is.
I know that every time I walk through the underwear aisle
at Kmart I get tantalizing thoughts.
I try to walk to the women's bra section
to see if I get tantalized as well, but nada.
I feel nothing.
Am I broken?
Somehow I knew my secrets weren't safe.
Even though no one in this apartment
spoke or read English, I would write my journal entry then
rip the pages from my notebook and I will burn them.
For a queer kid, growing up in the hood was it easy.
It didn't help that my name was Yosimar.
Why couldn't my mom name me something more
basic and boyish, like Juan or even Pedro?
Growing up, everyone thought that my mom named me
after that stupid novela Marimar,
so they would run and sing the tune of la novela, Yosimar, ow!
Costeñita soy.
It also didn't help that my nickname was gordo, which
basically translates to fat.
Like, come on, don't you all know that in the streets
you need to be respected?
How the hell am I supposed to make it
when my name sounds like the protagonist of a telenovela
and I have a fatphobic nickname?
These folks were really not trying
to set me up for success."
[LAUGHS]
So this is kind of my upbringing.
I always thought of myself growing up of like, oh my God.
You know?
Because when you grow up with immigrant parents,
they just don't understand the culture of the United States.
They have like this really different idea
of what this country is.
Much less queerness.
Like I feel like my family is still
trying to grapple with what that is.
And I just find it like, oh my God.
I felt like my life was like that sitcom, Everybody Hey
Chris.
Because the thing about adults when they're on survival mode,
it's not like they sit down with their children
and explain the things that are happening,
like you're catching up to what's happening.
And I felt like I was always catching up to the adults
and I was performing in my own process of what
was happening around me.
Thankfully, I always had a good grasp of English.
Since I was a translator for my family,
I always kind of had a good grasp on communication.
And also I think through translating,
I kind of got a sense of self-importance.
I knew that you don't want to make me upset because I'm not
going to translate for you.
So I knew my power was in being the translator.
And now, as much as I hate it, call this person, all that.
Now I'm like, OK, I'm kind of grateful for it
because it taught me the power of communication
and storytelling.
One of the things that I'm doing a lot of in my work
is trying to tell people that, yes, we're undocumented,
but I think we live full lives.
And I think we haven't really caught
into the nuance of how we live.
And maybe that's the fear in this country
that I think if we were able to tap
into the nuance of our lived experience,
we would be able to connect on a deeper level.
This is my grandma and my grandpa.
They're the ones that brought me to this country.
I always joke around.
I didn't even want to be here.
It's not like I had a choice.
Like I said, they gave me NyQuil and I woke up here.
I have something called DACA, Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals, which is a two-year program that now
they cut it to one year, and eventually they
want this program to fizzle out, right?
And basically, this allows me to work.
I can work in this country.
I graduated from San Francisco State University.
And I majored in English, creative writing,
so I can excel in my career.
And I wanted to take this picture because I'm like,
I'm going to immigration and I'm willingly going in.
If I don't come out, at least it's
going to be on my Instagram and people
are going to know where I'm at.
I'm at 1450 Coleman Avenue, OK?
Because I've been watching the first 48
Unsolved Mysteries, all these mystery crimes on Netflix.
I'm not going to go out like that.
You're going to know it was immigration.
That's where I'm at.
I was born in 1988.
I just turned 32 years old, so I'm very grown.
I think a lot of times we hear the term, oh, they're
just kids, they're just kids.
And, you know, that's how long we've
been waiting for immigration reform or the DREAM Act
because I remember I was in high school and now I'm 32.
So definitely I'm very grown.
I'm not a child anymore.
I'm from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, which
is Southern Mexico, which is really, really down there.
Oftentimes we hear the term like, we
didn't cross the border, the border crossed us, right?
Which is a famous saying to talk about how
California and Texas and Colorado
used to be Mexican territory.
But I'm from really down there, so I
tell people do not erase my story because I walked
all the way over there, OK?
And I was three years old when I did that.
So I was destined to be an overachieving immigrant
because at 3 years old I was crossing borders while you
were getting potty trained.
So I was destined for greatness.
This picture is a picture of us when I was five,
two years into the country.
Now it's considered a picture of a mixed status
family in which my two younger siblings have
documents and me and my older brother are undocumented.
I always joke around that if you are
the first citizen in your family,
if you are born to undocumented parents,
you're going to go to undocumented heaven
because we probably used our social security number to start
a bank account or you probably already
have credit because we used your social.
So thank you so much for being a really good ally to us.
So my sister probably has a really bad credit card.
Can't buy a house.
But you know what?
We love her and she's going to go to heaven for that.
Oftentimes, we get the question, how did I cross the border?
Again, people want me to say like some tragic Beowulf,
The Alchemist kind of story, like some origin story.
But it's really anticlimactic.
I am telling you I just woke up here.
I don't remember.
But now I'd like to make up stories.
So this is a--
if you're a writer or an immigrant,
this is a great effective writing prompt.
Just make up an origin story.
And you can't check public records.
You can't.
Like you're going to tell me I didn't cross like that?
You're going to tell me I didn't come in a camel?
You know?
You can't.
1991.
My upbringing was very Americanized.
I grew up in the 90s.
And I think one of the things that goes without saying,
90s was Black culture was American--
and I could argue that it's still American culture.
And I think we still don't know how
to merge that because we think that we all
live in silo communities.
But I showed up when Brenda's Got
a Baby was all over the radio.
I grew up watching, Malisha, The Wayans Brothers, The Parkers,
Girlfriends.
All those shows that Netflix has, now I'm like, oh my God.
I grew up on 90s RNB, so talk to me about Brandy, Monica.
All that.
That's my influence in how I grew up.
And I think that was very much American culture.
And then clashed with my immigrant parents that
were listening to Spanish music and didn't understand
why I was like so keen to this.
And I feel like that goes without saying
that for me, black culture represented the freedoms
that we do have today.
And I think it goes with-- that's
why I think right now that we're living
amongst this historical moment with the Black Lives Matter
movement, it's important for us as Latinos as well
to educate our parents about these issues
because they don't have context.
They didn't grow up with Black History Month.
They didn't grow up learning about Rosa Parks.
They didn't grow up learning about these leaders that
held this country accountable to what its meaning.
So I think that's why we have a lot of anti-Blackness
within our immigrant communities because they're just
misinformed.
And sadly, Univision, where we get our news,
it's not often the most representative
of where we come from because they're
being broadcasted by people that don't look like us.
So I always want to acknowledge that because I feel
like it goes without saying.
And my inspirations for writing were Alice Walker, The Color
Purple, which, by the way, I got to me
and she dedicated a poem to me.
So I can get deported, but Alice Walker dedicated a poem to me,
OK?
And then, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin.
These were like the people that influenced me in the--
I saw the power that reading a book that even though that's
not my culture, I was like, wow, this is very inspiring.
My grandparents raised me recycling bottles and cans.
And they're also my huge inspiration I think a lot
of times we also don't-- in this country,
we have a good analysis on race.
And talking about that, we still don't
talk about class disparities.
And if you grew up poor, which I now proudly say that I did
grow up below the poverty line.
When you grew up poor, you grow up shamed.
You think it's your fault, right?
And now I realize that it wasn't my fault.
I had no control over that.
These are the cards we dealt with.
But, you know what?
One of the beautiful things and the poetic things
about my family is that we basically-- we did,
we took the trash this country gave us.
We took the trash this country gave us.
We recycled it and we built lives
from the trash you gave us.
And I think if that's not testament.
And I hate the word resilience.
I hate the word resilience.
It's so overused.
Resilience means that you are making it
besides a natural force.
And I like to remind people that there's nothing
natural about being haunted.
There's nothing natural about being targeted.
That's not natural.
So I don't like the word resilience.
So I'm trying to figure out what is the other word that
defines who we are.
I get asked if I'm afraid all the time.
But no.
I'm good.
Girl, I grew up in the hood.
We're not scared of nothing.
And yeah.
I just want to give you a brief overview of kind of my method.
And I think for me, my biggest thing in my work
is like, how do we get rid of shame?
How do we get rid of vergüenza?
Because I think a lot of us have a lot of vergüenza with
our stories.
But honestly, if you really think about it,
all those things that you're embarrassed of
are actually your biggest influence
and are the things that give you perspective on the world.
And, you know?
I never want to make anybody feel embarrassed or anything
for the lived experience.
If anything, I feel if you're a writer
and if you want to embark on a journey,
write about those things, write about the things that
make you the most insecure because those
are the things that are going to resonate more with people.
And that's kind of been my method right now.
How do I become more transparent and vulnerable
because I feel like right now, as adults, we
lose vulnerability and I'm trying
to go back to recharging that.
But yeah.
This is kind of todo el desmadre that I got going on.
But yeah.
Let's see if you have any preguntas or anything.
I would gladly answer them before I move on.
Yeah.
The way you present your spoken word
has such a powerful, beautiful cadence.
How do you develop your style of reading your poems?
Thank you.
I'm glad you like that.
I think for me, I don't know.
I used to do the poet voice, you know?
Like doo, doo, doo, doo.
But then I realized, you know what?
I just want to talk like me because I
feel like it helps more if just people get a sense of who I am.
But ultimately, I think it just came over time.
I mean, I started since I was 16.
So I've been doing it for a while now.
But now that I'm trying to do theater and go
into my one-man show, I have to lose the cadence
because I can't do a whole piece sounding like igual.
So now I'm like, OK, there's breaks, there's breath.
So I'm learning all that stuff through acting
classes and stuff, which is a whole different--
I respect actors-- a whole different art form.
So yeah.
Let's see.
In honor of national coming out day,
can I ask if it was harder to come out as queer or as a poet
to your family?
Were they supportive of your career goals?
I know many families struggle to support kids
in careers that may not seem a viable road to success.
You know what?
The thing about having immigrant parents
is that they don't know what you--
my grandma for the longest did not know what I do.
I would be like, I'm an English major in college.
She's like, why are you going to go learn English?
You already speak English.
I'm like, grandma, English major is
somebody that reads books, interprets the literature,
and gives people meaning of what it means.
And she just cannot grab why people want to interpret books.
Right?
So I just like, oh girl, lost cause.
So then she started telling my neighbors
that I was an immigration lawyer because I was
like, I write about immigrants.
So all my neighbors started coming with me
with these cases, which I was like, wow,
these are really good stories.
I can write a whole anthology out of these stories.
But I am not an immigration lawyer.
But I definitely know immigration lawyers
that can help you and I can definitely Google some stuff.
But I think right now that it's hard.
They understand that I'm writing.
They know that I'm writing.
But I think they just don't--
they can't grasp, people like reading stories about us.
You know?
Like all people.
But I think one of the beautiful things
that she's coming around now that she's like, I want you
to write a book about my life.
I'm like, OK, girl, we'll writer it.
But you need to-- the thing about immigrants too
is that they don't understand that in order to write a story,
it needs to have a story arc, right?
You need to have the build-up, the conflict, the resolution.
Immigrants are always in crisis.
My grandma just wants to tell me crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis.
Girl, we cannot.
I do not want to read a novel where it's all crises.
So I would like to tell you, OK, grandma,
I want you to tell me your story,
but start with the good parts and then
we can get into the bad parts.
But I totally understand.
I realize that for a lot of us, all we want to do is be heard.
At the end of the day, we just want someone
to listen without judging, someone
to listen without inserting themselves,
someone to just listen.
At the end of the day, I think that's what we want.
That's why we read.
That's the power of communication.
You just want someone to listen.
So as much as I laugh, I'm like, I try to understand her.
I think for me, one of the biggest-- the hardest thing was
definitely coming out as queer because as queer immigrants,
we get taught that we come to this country and your parents
sacrifice everything for you to make it,
that oftentimes I felt that I was an overachiever,
a straight-A student.
I was trying to make it out of my neighborhood.
But I felt like by me coming out as queer,
all that work was going to be thrown down,
like it's not going to matter.
And I think that's the pressure that a lot of us
first generation queer people might have that we--
that's why you have so many nerdy queers.
I feel like we overcompensate through books.
Like if I make myself super, super smart people will
respect me, right?
I know it's like--
and I realize that at the end of the day,
thankfully I have a family that they don't understand
a lot of things and I'm very patient with them,
but you know they understand that I
am trying to do something positive for the world.
But yeah.
Coming out.
And I think the hardest thing is coming out to yourself.
I remember my first poem that I wrote.
I was 16 and I came out in public and I cried so much.
And it was hard because I realized that that was going
to be the rest of my life.
The rest of my life was me feeling
that I have to justify why I'm queer
or feeling that I have to give everybody
a 101 of what this is.
Especially in my neighborhood because oftentimes even Latinos
we don't see examples of notable respected queers.
We're always the pun of jokes or we're always made fun of.
So I'm like, I guess I like to make fun of myself,
but at the same time I like to be treated
with respect and dignity.
And I don't want to be the pun of every joke.
But we do have Juan Gabriel, which
we know is a cultural icon in our families, OK?
My grandma stayed digging through trash cans.
Oh, thank you.
See?
It's universal.
And I didn't want to write about that,
but now everybody's is like, oh my God,
I went through that too.
I'm like, oh my God.
We can have our own recycle-- we were out here
being green before Al Gore, OK?
Before the Inconvenient Truth.
We had that shit down.
I [INAUDIBLE] of the most wonderful stories
and the humor and the respect you
show for those vulnerabilities.
Thank you.
Do you identify as an activist?
Has your status as a queer and undocumented
demand you to become politically engaged?
You know?
When I was younger, I would say activist, right?
But I realized I don't know.
I think for me, politics is very interesting in the way
that it shapes our understanding of the world.
But at the same time, I feel like I've
been watching all these documentaries
about how often times we stay in our own little silos
in our own little group.
So oftentimes, our conversations are only
amongst people that agree with us.
But then, for me, I'm more interested in kind
of developing--
not that I'm trying to convince anybody,
but trying to get to the root of the problem.
For the people that say make America great again, I'm like,
can you tell me the date?
What day in your life was a great for you
and what was happening?
Because I'm really trying to investigate what was that.
But I don't know if I would call myself an activist.
I think for me, I'm trying to do--
yes, I want to advocate for people's dignity
and treating everybody with respect and rights.
There's a Toni Morrison quote that said
that racism is a distraction.
It keeps us from doing the work.
Racism keeps us justifying all the time
like they tell you, oh, you don't have a culture,
to spend so much time trying to prove that you do.
They tell you, oh, you don't have a language.
So you spend so much time trying to do what you do.
And there's always some more thing that you have to prove.
But at the end of the day, our goal
is to investigate ourselves, to investigate what we have to do
and what we need to do to work for ourselves.
So I realize that that's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to do the work for me to figure out
how I can be a better person and show up for people.
So I think that's the road that I'm on right now,
trying to block the over stimulation that we get.
I love the combination of humor, pain, and honesty
in your poems.
Did you ever feel that there were some immigration
stories you felt you needed to keep to yourself and not share?
Yeah.
I think one of the things that is
very interesting about social media,
we live in an era of oversharing, right?
Girl, you'd be posting your food,
you'd be posting all kinds of things.
But honestly, we really need to pay attention to some things
because there are some things that are really
sacred and some things that you don't want
people to comment on, right?
I would get frustrated because I would write some poems
and then people would put sad emojis.
But I'm like, I don't like that.
I don't like people feeling sad or pity.
I don't like that.
And so I was like, OK, I need to learn
how to keep the things that I feel like are sacred for me
and then just maybe not post them, but maybe
share them with a place where I feel safe that I can share it.
Because the thing about sharing raw things
or vulnerable things, you don't know how
they're going to be received.
So I always talk about vulnerability is important.
But there's people out here who, whatever
lived experience are not ready for that,
and they might take the vulnerability
that you gifted them and manipulate it and use it
for something else.
So I think be very aware of that.
So I definitely try to keep some things.
Some things I'm like, hmm.
Especially my family story because my family tells me
everything and I'm like, OK, I need to ask permission
before I share this, right?
Because it's their life.
I really need to be aware of that.
It's not, yes, you gave it to me and we live together
and we're close, but some things I have to ask permission.
Let's see.
Are there any poets or artists whose work you like to amplify
and whose work is inspiring you right now?
OK.
Yes.
That's a good question.
Let me bring it up.
OK, everybody.
This is Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
She published a book called The Undocumented Americans.
It just won a National Book Award.
She's the first undocumented writer
to get this prestigious award.
If you have not read this book, I
don't know what you're doing during quarantine, OK?
You're just out here staring at the walls
when you can be reading this dynamic masterpiece.
So this is a beautiful book, The Undocumented Americans.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
It's just a perfect book.
And she just follows a group of undocumented workers through--
first responders.
So the folks that cleaned up the buildings
in 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, people in Miami, Cleveland, the water
crisis.
So she follows them.
And right now in this pandemic, I
think this book is really prevalent
being that Latinos are the ones that
are being impacted disproportionately
by the coronavirus in our neighborhoods.
One, I think it goes without saying that there's
a lot of invisible labor that undocumented immigrants do
in this country that goes without being rewarded.
So this book is definitely a beautiful love.
And it's so punk rock.
I love it.
So check this out.
And then, let's see.
Anything about Edwidge Danticat.
She's a Haitian writer she is like the ultimate--
she is everything.
There's a book called Kirk?
Krak! of short stories that I love.
What is next for you?
Books, plays, one-man show.
OK.
So I have-- my one-man show was supposed to premiere,
but COVID happened.
So right now we're looking at making it a virtual event
and how to make it happen.
But I did a reading yesterday with one of my short stories.
And I think for me, I think everybody
every writer has this.
They're like, oh my God, this is so corny.
I always think that my writing is so corny.
Like this is so corny.
I don't-- oh.
I can't believe I wrote that.
But yesterday, I read a story that I was like, this is good.
OK.
I'm good.
So I have those moments.
So thanks for those moments.
But now, I'm starting to work on my book.
And thankfully, I've had different opportunities
of people reaching out.
So, hopefully, that manuscript comes together.
And then, hopefully next time we meet you're going to be like,
oh my God, that's the guy that came to tell jokes virtually
who now has a book.
So we're praying and manifesting that a book
is coming to the near future after the show
that we do premiere.
So yeah.
Just putting-- it's a discipline.
Honestly, I had a professor thankfully.
I know there are some professors here.
I like those professors that really challenge you.
I was more like the kid that learn from like boot camp
because I had a professor that was like, OK, I get it,
you're a writer.
And he would tell me, I get it, you're gay.
I get it, you're undocumented.
What else?
What else is there?
And then he would be like just because you like airplanes
does not mean you're a pilot.
And just because you like writing
does not mean you're a writer.
You need to go practice and learn
a craft before you're out here calling yourself a pilot.
And I'm like, OK.
So shout out to those professors.
Honestly, don't be giving them bad reviews on RateMyProfessor.
I was like, thank you, I learned so much.
How did you establish yourself as a writer?
What inspired you the most?
When I was 19, I released my first collection of Poetry
for Colored Boys Who Speak Softly,
which were horrible poems.
I told them I was like the little immigrant Taylor Swift
because I was writing poems about all
these brown activist guys that I had crushes on.
And I actually got a chance to collaborate with Carlos
Santana, the guitarist.
And that's how I was able to launch the book.
And I think I wanted to launch the book because I
was like, I want people to know that I'm serious about this.
I'm not just a teenager that's out
here doing cute little poems.
I'm not here like freedom writers,
like a little hood kid who writes a story.
I want people to take me seriously.
I want them to know I'm taking this seriously.
And thankfully, after I launched my book,
I started getting so many requests.
UC Santa Barbara teaches one of my poems
for their intro to queer studies.
And I started getting things like that.
And this is for me.
I was a community college student.
I went to a state school because I
couldn't go to UC because I didn't have money to pay.
I realized like, wow, here I am.
I was on a bus to community college going to give lectures
at UC Berkeley.
You know?
So I realized like that facade of the hierarchies
and the eliticism of university, it doesn't really
matter because you have that lived experience
that a lot of people and academics want to learn about.
So I think that's what kind of launched me and pushed me
to kind of stay true to myself.
And I was like, I don't want to be--
I could get down with you, I could be hyper intellectual
and talk to you about the epistemologies of quién sabe
qué tanto.
But I realized that my work needed to translate
to the people I come from.
And now I'm doing more work in Spanish.
I realized that I needed to translate all of my poems
because I realized that the people I write about
are like, hey, you wrote a poem about me, but I don't get it.
You need to translate it.
So now I'm like, OK, now I do both English and Spanish
even though Spanish is taking me a little longer.
But I know the significance and importance of that.
And I'm so grateful to people.
Every time somebody invites me somewhere,
I'm always like, thank you so much.
Because, you know?
There's so many other people that you could get,
but I'm always grateful for that.
And I don't take it for granted.
I know that at any point coming from where I'm from,
it's a big gift that people find that.
It's the value that people put in the work
because, ultimately, these poems are coming from a place that
oftentimes is ignored.
So I'm always grateful for that.
For National Coming Out day, what are the resources
that you would like to give a shout out
to help people within the LGBT community
to give them power to come out?
Honestly, coming out is a process.
I always feel like you should come out
when you're ready because you don't owe it to nobody.
I never liked the word "coming out"
because it always felt like a confession,
like I got to tell you something.
And I didn't like that.
I was like, I don't want to--
it's a blessing.
We need to throw a party.
We need to throw a baptism.
We need to throw like a ceremony because I feel like now,
queerness is--
shout out to the straight people if there's heterosexuals
in the room, we accept you for who you are,
I know that it's not a choice, you were born like this,
we get it, you know?
It's beautiful, just know that we accept you for who you are.
See how condescending that feels?
[LAUGHS]
So I was more like, now I view it as a gift.
No shade to the straight people, but I
don't know what kind of fun activities
I would do if I was straight.
No shade.
I'm just saying.
[LAUGHS]
But I think coming out, look for examples.
I would start with books.
If you're in the process of trying to figure out
your voice and your strength, start
by reading people that already paved the way
or already left some sort of literature or guide for you
as a blueprint to how they do it.
I would start with Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.
There's a book right now that came out,
Not All Boys Are Blue by George M. Johnson that's
definitely been very influential and
a beautiful, beautiful book.
It's YA, so a lot of the girls that like fast reads,
you will like this one because it's a beach read.
Sometimes reading can be very heavy.
But Not All Boys Are Blue.
Oh.
And then another one, YA, Aristotle and Dante Discover
the Secrets of the Universe.
That is one of my favorite books.
So start with books, I would say.
I should be a librarian.
Any advice for emerging writers and poets particularly
about getting published?
We live in a digital age.
Honestly, if you are an Instagram, if you are--
start sharing your work.
I think there's a lot of people--
if you are shy about sharing your work,
just think about that there's somebody
that when they were younger needed to hear your words.
Think about your younger self and do it for that.
Thankfully, I started sharing my work online.
I started recording audio recording
and shooting little videos, poetry videos.
And since everybody is consuming videos,
that's what kind of made me kind of get more out there.
So that's been a good way.
And honestly, I self-published my first book.
I self-published because I felt like it was a good project
and I already started having some sort of foundation.
So I definitely self-published.
The one thing I would say, edit, edit, edit.
You never stop editing.
And then just hang out in literary circles.
Start being friends with people that write.
I would go to a lot of literary events.
And read a lot of books.
I read so much.
And I'd be like, OK, I can see what they're doing.
I know how to use the tools.
So I think just establishing your own community on that
and you'll find that there's a lot of people seeking.
And right now is the best-- honestly,
if you're a person of color, if you're a queer person,
right now is the time to publish and to get it out there.
There's so many good books coming out right now
that I think people are hungry.
And now that we're challenging these institutions to represent
us, there's so many books and so many stories out there
that are so diverse and people are hungry for.
So a lot of the books are right here on the chat.
So feel free to tap into those.
I'm going to end with this poem.
It's titled A Poem So the Weight of This Country
Does Not Crush You.
I wrote this poem after the last election because I'm like, ugh.
They're really going to come for us.
And so I know right now we're living during a pandemic
and we're living doing this kind of really intense times.
But I think we need I wanted to write a poem to know
that we are in this together.
So it's a poem so the weight of this country
does not crush you.
"Some days, you may wake up sad.
Some days, you may wake up frustrated.
Some days, you may wake up tired.
Some days, you may wonder if it's worth it.
Some days, you may question your own growth.
Some days, you may think how immense the world
is to be caged in this country, to be subjugated to this abuse.
Some days, you just want to breathe.
And baby, I am here to remind you to sit in those moments,
to sit in that whirlpool, but just know there are people like
me picking up the load when you can't.
There are people like me pushing so the weight of this country
does not crush you.
There are people like you who will fight when I can't.
And we will take turns pushing against these walls.
I got your back and you got mine.
And in the scheme of things, does anything else matter?
Even if our fight is unfruitful, we will depart with our dignity
intact.
We will depart knowing that this country is losing a prized
possession, this country is losing
the gift of our resilience.
We will watch them as they tear into each other's skins
and we will thank the heavens we never
turn into beasts like them.
So yeah.
Thank you.
Muchas gracias for having me.
And if I'm of any resource to you, feel free to reach out.
But yeah.
You can check out more of my work on yosimar.com.
If you're on Instagram, you can request me [INAUDIBLE]
@yosirey on Instagram.
But yeah.
Most of my stuff is online on YouTube.
Thank you so much.
God bless America.
Register to vote.
Fill out the census, all that patriotic good things.
[LAUGHS]
[MUSIC PLAYING]