On Sisterhood and Revolution – Dr. Luzma Umpierre Speaks

An Open Letter to Frances Aparicio:

First of all, I want to thank you for something you did for me years ago but that still remains with me. When I published my collection: En el país de las maravillas and started reading it in public, I had many requests for English versions of my Spanish poems. One of the poems that received the most requests was “Dios se muda.” At that time, I did not feel confident at all in translating my own poetry or anyone else’s. So I remember writing to you in Michigan and asking if you could do so for me. You were so kind as to send me your translation and I went over it making some small changes to have it sound like my voice was not “lost in translation.” I always read the poem after that in public forums stating that the translation was yours.

Recently, I have finally had time to re-read articles that I had left behind some time ago but that I wanted to answer to. It has taken me years to build a “room of my own” in life to be able to care for my personal writing without the need to continue divulging the works of other women to the academic world as a professed duty. At one point in my poetic career, when I was invited to read my own work at public forums, I refused to and only accepted if I could devote half of my reading to the works of other women who at the time were unknown, like Julia Alvarez, Marjorie Agosin, Sandra Esteves, Lorraine Sutton, and many others.

As I said, I recently I came upon, once again, your article/chapter: “From Ethnicity to Multiculturalism.” I read it with glee and even posted the PDF, now available, on my page on Facebook. Your work has always had a depth that many others lack and a human touch that I appreciated. In that article, several things caught my attention. I will only give you my opinions on what you wrote about my own poetry because others can speak for themselves and I do not need to use my voice any longer to come to anyone’s defense.

Yes, you are right. My early poems had anger in them. Recently, I revisited the subject of anger by making more formal readings on the subject. Anger is an important tool. It was particularly important to those of us who, as Gilbert and Gubart explain, “walked straight out of the attic into the classroom.” We were labeled as “mad women” for many reasons, but one of them being that we dared to teach the “mad literature “of the marginalized. My poetic anger/mad-ness was my way of coping with the world that surrounded me in academia and which wanted to doblegarme.

I have recommended, in many forums and workshops, that we all objectify our anger in writing as a tool. Without any psychotherapy back then when I started to write, I went along with the most productive way of using my anger: writing poetry. Many people have written to me over the years telling me that some of those poems put into words the same feelings they had. Others felt threatened by what they saw of themselves in the poems and, in a usual paranoid moment taken from the psyche of academia, they have thought that a poem was modeled after them specifically. I remember a man at an academic conference telling me openly: “I have a fear of being the object of one of your poems.” I laughed profoundly at his comment. My anger was used for other purposes. I had an “addiction” to seeking justice. My need was to procure, for the generation of students that I taught, the privileges that I never had. I use the word “addiction” purposely because there was no injustice that I perceived that I did not confront/take on. Now, in old age, I know that I left a mark in the academic world for the young to have benefits which were procured by our battles. I say “our” because I was not alone. Many of us in this group of early/mad-women warriors were Women of Color. Many of us were ultimately marginalized in academia and we no longer have the professions in which we made our legacy. Frances, I am not bitter about that because ultimately I know that the only mark that I need to make in this world is to make a difference in my own life. And my struggles have indeed bore fruit these days in a very personal quietude of the soul. So much on my poetic and legal anger.

I go on to the second subject that I wanted to address you about: the notion that my work falls under the category of Nuyorican Poets. The honor is too immense. I say it is too immense because the poets in that generation were/are true trailblazers in the concept that one could write literature in exile but still be part of our island heritage. Unfortunately, as you well know, this group of poets suffered the shunning of the academic world both in Puerto Rico and the USA and my battle to include them in my own classes was met by academicians with fierce opposition.

Frances, I was born in Puerto Rico. I only traveled to NYC at the age of 14 for a short summer visit with my mother to see her family there. She also wanted to show me her second favorite city; her first and foremost being Old San Juan where she was born. I attended elementary, high school, college and some graduate school courses on the island. I also worked in Puerto Rico at many places. I was a legal secretary; I was in charge of a blood bank at the Hospital de Santurce where the Museo de Puerto Rico now stands. I was a clerk at Plaza Las Américas. And I was also a teacher at Academia María Reina where I had the honor to impart both Spanish and World History classes to some of the most notable women architects, CEOs, doctors, mothers and daughters living on the island today. In fact, my most recent trip to Puerto Rico, to visit the only aunt that I have left at her sick bed, was totally financed by my former students from Academia María Reina. In a moving email sent to me, they explained their reasons: I had been their role model, a source of laughter, joy and knowledge.

Paradoxically enough, my very first incursion as an advocate for Human and Civil Rights in life was before la Comisión de Derechos Civiles in Puerto Rico while I was still a student at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. I was deposed on an investigation that the Comisión did on the existence, or lack thereof, academic freedom at private colleges on the island. My deposition was one of the very few ones quoted in the printed published decision. I was a student at that moment so I think I understand what is it to fight for academic freedoms on the island from a very personal perspective.

In 1974, I left Puerto Rico for reasons that I have written about elsewhere (see my blog Luzma Speaks). From 1974 to 1978, I spent around 7 months a year in Pennsylvania and 5 or more in Puerto Rico. So, I was never an “absentee citizen.” I voted in Puerto Rican elections. I lived at the home of my parents. My home was not in Pennsylvania but in Santurce, Puerto Rico. When I was introduced to receive my doctoral degree at Bryn Mawr, I insisted on not being introduced as a student “From the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” but from the “nation of Puerto Rico.”

From 1978 to 1987, although I was teaching in the USA, I continued to spend around 7 months of the year in New Jersey and 5 months or more in Puerto Rico. I had an apartment on the island. Most of my poems, be them in English or Spanish from that time, except for The Margarita Poems, were written at my mother’s home which was also mine, or at the home of my aunts on the island. My mother died in 1987 and that is when my status as living partly in the USA and partly on the island ended. At least half of the poems in my book Y otras desgracias… were based on my experiences living in Puerto Rico.

Once my mother died, I could not afford living there for half of the year. So I started traveling less to the island, only about 3 or 4 times a year. The Margarita Poems was my first book totally written in the USA and it was not even written in NYC but in my travels between New Jersey and Kansas. Why explain all of this to you? Because very few people realize that all of my formation was in Puerto Rico, that I had a career in Puerto Rico, that I studied in Puerto Rico and, therefore, I am a Puerto Rican. Yes, my mother was a Nuyorican but she lived her adult life from 23 to her death at 73 in Puerto Rico. The fact that she was raised in NYC helped me embrace her fellow Nuyoricans with joy and pride and inclusion. It gave me a broader vision of “who belongs.” I have written two highly ignored books on Puerto Rican Literature, one of which was published by Editorial Cultural. Many of my academic articles were published on the island: at the Revista de estudios hispánicos, Mairena, la Revista del Instituto de Cultura, among others. I chaired the very first panels at the MLA on Rosario Ferré, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Nilita Vientós. My most recent articles are on the work of Daniel Torres and Nemir Matos Cintrón. Still to this day, I send articles to La acera and Diálogo. I have kept in contact with the newer generation of critics and writers there.

Since there are less and less Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico, I guess that some people from my literary generation on the island are close to having their dream come true: be alone by themselves as the only ones included in Puerto Rican Literature. And they have tried hard to exclude me and others because we were/are too Gay or Lesbian, or too bilingual, or too much of a woman, or we did not write about flowers, or we were not nationalists in the “correct way.” That is fine, Frances, because I do not need to prove to anyone what I have been all along: an islander, a woman from Puerto Rico, a woman whose ashes will be spread there to be reborn, again and again, as a sediment of my nation.

My regards to your daughter, who I remember from when she was a child, and to you a warm embrace in sisterhood and revolution. Thank you for your essay that opened the door for me to ponder, and clarify.

Luz Maria Umpierre (Luzma)

See Luzma’s blog here: http://luzma-umpierre.blogspot.com/

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