Author: Janel

This post examines how a biographical understanding of Javier Zamora’s life illuminates both the content and publication history of his poetry. Born in El Salvador, Zamora migrated to the United States at nine years old; his recently published and first full-length poetry collection, Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press 2017) describes the Salvadoran Civil War’s impact on his family, as well as his experiences with border crossings. It is evident that Zamora’s identity and experiences as a Salvadoran immigrant living in the U.S. are central to the stories he tells within his poems, on top of being crucial to his politicized motivation to write and share these stories in the first place. In addition to holding a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from New York University, Zamora has won numerous prestigious fellowships. Currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Zamora is arguably the most institutionally well-recognized contemporary Salvadoran writer.

With poems that appear in literary spaces as prestigious as The New York Times, Poetry, and Granta, among many others, Zamora’s work has reached a prominent status by mainstream literary standards. Of the list of contemporary Salvadoran poets actively writing in the U.S. that I have identified in the last few months of research, Zamora is one of three to be featured on the Poetry Foundation website. The other two Salvadoran poets recognized by the Poetry Foundation are Christopher Soto and William Archila; although Soto and Archila’s biographies are highlighted by the Poetry Foundation, individual poems are not. On the contrary, Poetry has featured seven of Zamora’s poems and a blog post reflecting on one of his poems published by the magazine. Several of these poems, as well as others that were published elsewhere in literary journals ranging from the American Poetry Review to Huizache and Ploughshares, reappear in Zamora’s Unaccompanied.

Importantly, Zamora has not only been recognized for his individual poems or even more broadly, for his poetic prowess, but rather, it seems many major media organizations are also invested in how his presence and process as a writer is shaping current literary cultures. Featured in an article by The New York Times titled, “The Rooms Where Writers Work,” Zamora is highlighted alongside writers Camille Bordas and Danzy Senna. He is depicted via photograph in his San Rafael home, and the article features Zamora’s description his daily life, ranging from the music that inspires his work, his reading habits, to details about his writing process. This is significant because of the infrequency with which writers of color are allowed the space to discuss fundamental elements of craft and process.

In many of the interviews published online, Zamora has spoken often of his journey as a poet in constantly revising his work as he revisits the trauma of the narratives he recounts. In the aforementioned interview with The New York Times, Zamora said: “Some of the poems in my new book were the first ones I ever wrote, and I worked on them, especially the one about crossing the border, ‘‘Let Me Try Again,’’ for almost nine years.” The poem appears in the July/August 2016 edition of The Kenyon Review, in an earlier draft of the one published in Unaccompanied. Zamora’s formal changes are evident, as the poem moves from a controlled couplet structure to become a poem that is far more jarring in its scattered composition.

A poetry collection that also builds upon his 2011 chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes, Unaccompanied has recently received  much attention and acclaim since its publication in September this year. Most notably is The New Yorker’s feature of his work, an article called “An Immigrant Who Crossed the Border as a Child Retraces His Journey, In Poems.” The title of the piece already evokes certain expectations for Zamora’s writing—in terms of why it matters and through what lens it should be read. Zamora’s identity as immigrant is prioritized before his identity as poet, indicating a politicized reading of his poems. This is especially interesting in considering The New Yorker as a reputable, high-caliber magazine with an audience that might generally be described as particularly invested in notions of ‘literary prestige.’ Questions that this raises for my research are: how does Zamora’s existence in prestigious literary spaces inform or complicate the way we might understand his work and, specifically, his work in the broader contexts of Salvadoran and U.S. Latinx writing? What does it mean, politically speaking, for his poetry to be recognized in the way that it has—especially in the present-day United States, under a presidency that has continued to publicly threaten Central American teenagers, in particular, with deportation?

Bibliography:
Blitzer, Jonathan. “An Immigrant Who Crossed the Border as a Child Retraces His Journey, In Poems.” The New Yorker. 19 September 2017.

Guadagnino, Kate. “The Room Where Writers Work.” The New York Times. 16 Aug. 2017 

Paredez, Deborah. “Unaccompanied: An Interview with Javier Zamora.” Poets.org. 2 October 2017. 

Zamora, Javier. Nueve Anños Inmigrantes. Organic Weapon Arts, 2011.

Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2017. Print.

My efforts to analyze the role of resistance and resilience in Salvadoran writing is both rooted in and inseparable from my own identity and relationship to these stories. My work to gain a better understanding of the country’s history, political climate, and particularly, of the Salvadoran Civil War, is as central to my academic project as it is to my understanding of myself, my family, and culture. This work is also foundational for my creative work, as I am someone that is not only invested in studying Salvadoran writing, but also a Salvadoran-American woman writing in the same tradition of the writing that I am researching and analyzing. What this brings to my literary analysis is a consciousness for how my own positionality and lived experiences shape my understanding and interpretation of these literary works.

I first came across Javier Zamora’s work in The Wandering Song—an anthology in which one of my own poems appears. Eager to read more work by contemporary Salvadoran writers, I went through the anthology’s author biographies and researched the writers whose work had been published. I was drawn to Zamora’s work after reading his poem titled “El Salvador” on the Poetry Foundation website. The poem also appears in Zamora’s poetry collection, Unaccompanied, which narrates his experiences migrating from El Salvador to the United States at nine years old. Zamora’s “El Salvador” personifies the country so as to begin a conversation that addresses the intricacies of the speaker’s relationship to it:

Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb
             will clean your beard of  salt, and if  I touch your volcanic face,

kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster. 

The poem is ultimately driven by the question of return, as the speaker analyzes his positionality in relation to the country’s sociopolitical climate. His characterization of Salvador’s face as volcanic evokes a recurring trope common to Central American writing that draws upon the isthmus’s geographic landscape to describe Central America and its people—a trope that my own writing has reflected. When the speaker begs, “please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster,” he begins a discussion of both criminalization and the militarized police force in El Salvador and focuses on that to convey his relationship to the country.

In my own positionality as a U.S. poet born to Salvadoran immigrants, my experience is a generation removed from homeland and has created a disconnect that I seek to bridge through both my studies and my poetry. This positionality means that when I sat down to write my own version of an “El Salvador” poem in my sophomore year poetry workshop, drawing from my own experiences was limited to envisioning El Salvador primarily through the perspectives of my six-year-old and ten-year-old selves (the ages during which I had visited El Salvador). Unlike Zamora and other Salvadoran writers like William Archila, Leticia Hernández-Linares, and Alexandra Relegado, my own life is rooted in the hyphen between my Salvadoran-American identity. I do not carry the same stories that these writers emphasize in their works, but I do maintain a consciousness for this via the stories shared within my family.

I read, write, and analyze Salvadoran literature through the lens of my own upbringing in U.S. culture and education as well as with understandings of my cultural heritage and family history. My personal connection to the work that I am studying shapes my scholarship in crucial ways: it is the reason for which I am able to engage directly with specific cultural references and experiences described in the literature I study. As I move forward with my research, it is as important that I consider my positionality and personal connection to the work, as much as it is that I engage critically through theoretical frameworks and approaches.

Zamora, Javier. “El Salvador” Poetry, November 2016.

While visiting the Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution in Perquín, Morazan, what struck me most was the museum’s vast dedication to displaying various international posters that specifically address and resist U.S. imperialism in El Salvador/Central America. The posters at the museum ranged in origin from neighboring Latin American countries (Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, Guatemala, etc.) to (unspecified) Francophone nations and even the U.S. itself. This demonstrated a global awareness of many of the injustices being perpetuated by the U.S. against El Salvador in the events leading up to and during the civil war. Many of these posters displayed phrases like “Stop bombing El Salvador” and “U.S. out of El Salvador!” in order to address the U.S. government’s instrumental role in supporting the Salvadoran right-wing military through funding, trainings, and other direct involvement.

Upon searching for more information on the Salvadoran Civil War in the Latin American Digital Initiatives through the University of Texas Libraries, I came across the Colección Conflicto Armado, from el Museo de la Palabra y el Imagen (Armed Conflict Collection from the Museum of the Word and Image) in San Salvador, El Salvador. One of the posters I was most interested in is pictured here:

The poster depicts a man dressed in attire typical to campesinos (peasant farmers) holding a corvo (or machete) over his head, in preparation to attack the large and imposing clawed hand that digs into the map of Central American land. The clawed hand is representative of the United States, indicated by the sleeve that bears stars and red and white stripes. Further, the specificity in relevance to the Central American region is made clear by the way the poster isolates the region from its neighboring Latin American countries, and thus centers Central America and the U.S.’s particular role in Central American countries. Through its imagery, the poster characterizes the campesino, in an empowered way, as the central force to resisting the U.S. imperial hand.

The use of the corvo as the campesino’s method of resistance is significant in its indication of class—especially in focusing on a war with origins in the exploitation of the poor and widespread socioeconomic inequalities. As Manlio Argueta remarks throughout his novel Un dia en la vida (1980), the first sign of a Salvadoran campesino man is that he treats his corvo like an extension of his own hand—it is a tool essential to his everyday work but it is also a tool necessary to the campesino man’s defense and protection of his family. In the poster, the corvo is presented as the campesino’s means of resisting U.S. imperial power. While the corvo is positioned so as to attack the clawed hand, it is, interestingly, literally attacking the very word “America” at the top of the poster. The poster therefore highlights the campesino’s corvo as a critical to subverting U.S. power.

Ultimately, the poster’s purpose is made clear in its headline: “U.S. Hands Off Central America Now!” Written in English and produced in the United States at Casa El Salvador in San Francisco, CA, the poster targets English-speaking audiences and is especially relevant to American citizens. It is an important record of how American communities and organizations were responding to the Reagan administration’s continued support of the Salvadoran government during the civil war. This is helpful to my research because it enables a continued broadening of my understanding of the Salvadoran Civil War in both ‘homeland’ and ‘diaspora.’

Although my initial research scan to find the exact purpose or role of Casa El Salvador has not been conclusive, its very name leads me to assume that it was possibly a community organization dedicated to issues in El Salvador but likely also one that was invested in Salvadoran communities living in the United States. Especially given its location in California, such an organization would have likely been accessible to many Salvadoran refugees who fled El Salvador in the events leading up to the war or once it had begun. Continuing to research primary documents will be essential to deepening my understanding of the historical contexts and sociopolitical implications of Salvadoran resistance. These sources will further inform my work, as I begin to analyze the role of resistance in Salvadoran writing.

Toni Morrison’s novels consistently raise critical moral questions via their intricate plots, complex character development, and the use of narrative devices such as flashback and/or limited perspectives. Beloved, in particular, deals with the moral binary of good versus evil, or otherwise ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ by complicating the way readers consider the extent of the role of ‘evil’ and also what may be deemed as ‘good.’ The main force of evil in the novel is the institution of slavery, and Beloved actively works to unpack the intricacies of this ‘evil’ by considering how it shapes the way we understand ‘goodness’ relative to its oppositionary force.

Beloved responds to the personal and interpersonal traumas created by the institution of slavery by highlighting how these traumas manifest in the characters’ lives, and drawing specific attention to relevant historic detail. On the most basic, fundamental level, one might reduce such a novel to an anti-slavery text with the main argument that “slavery is bad”; this kind of text typically sets up a binary that suggests slave-owners are guilty while enslaved people are innocent. But Morrison does not give this to us straight—in fact, she hardly gives us the opportunity to even think we’re off the hook so easily.

The book is loaded with examples of slavery and racism’s pervasiveness. For example, the detailing of Paul D’s horrific experience with the iron bit exposes the cruel, torturous elements of slavery: “He wants me to ask him about what it was like for him—about how offended the tongue is, held down by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back,” (71). Decades later, Paul D continues to face the repercussions of having had the iron bit forced upon him. There is no ambiguity here; the iron bit is a clear, representative symbol of the evil of slavery.

Sethe’s description in the above quote reveals another binary that Beloved addresses within the institution of slavery—“the place before Sweet Home” versus Sweet Home itself. The novel hardly describes the place before Sweet Home except for in passing—in brief memories of traumas that the characters experienced. Yet, by grounding most of the novel’s story in Sweet Home, Morrison further complicates and criticizes the notion of a more “benevolent” form of slavery. Sethe’s understanding of Sweet Home is informed by her past experience: “The Garners, it seemed to her, ran a special kind of slavery, treating them like paid labor, listening to what they said, teaching what they wanted known. And he didn’t stud his boys. Never brought them to her cabin with directions to ‘lay down with her,’” (140). The ‘goodness’ of Sweet Home—here indicated not by a moral judgment but merely by the word ‘special’—is defined by Garners’ treatment of her being better than her previous situation i.e. not being subjected to sexual abuse or extensive degrading. Other points in the narrative storyline continue to challenge the notion of a ‘good’ kind of slavery, as when Sister Brodwin says: “We don’t hold with slavery, even Garner’s kind,” (145).

While Sweet Home might be considered “good” relative to the place before it, it is also specifically Sethe’s trauma associated with Schoolteacher that drives her to kill her own daughter. Sethe is the novel’s “heroine” and thus we are made to empathize with her, but yet, this does not mean that she is free from moral judgment based on her actions. Morrison complicates the binary which suggests Sethe’s “goodness” by depicting a complex character who is deeply impacted by the role of the ‘evil’ (slavery) in her life: a character who cannot be easily dismissed as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ specifically because we understand the wider moral injustice of slavery when we consider the moral injustice of her act as a mother.

Beloved calls for a complex understanding of morality, rather than considering it something that could be so easily clear-cut. Both sides of judgment—both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are informed by the contexts in which that very moral judgment is made.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Plume: 1988.

“Diaspora.” “Immigration.” “Latino, Latina, Latin@.” “Migration,”  Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2007.

“diaspora, n.” “exile, n.1.” “refugee, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017.

David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.

Javier Zamora’s “Let Me Try Again,” is concerned not only with the politics involved in the process of migrating but also with the politics of relaying a narrative about migrating. The poem begins with the speaker’s direct address to the audience: “I could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted / after so many days without it,/ the trees, the breed of dogs…” (61). This introduction relays the speaker’s belief that the sensory details he lists will risk boring the reader—yet, the speaker’s consciousness of this ‘risk’ does not impede the speaker from listing them. What this reveals is that though the speaker is aware of his audience and of his storytelling, he is not necessarily invested in ‘convincing’ or swaying an audience; rather, the poem’s progression demonstrates the speaker’s own relationship to the very story he tells—both in what he tells and how he tells it. The poem’s structure is divided by addressing these two distinct aspects. While the formal structure reflects the speaker’s multiple attempts to tell the story, the poem’s narrative content is more invested in pointing to the multiple attempts migrants make to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

In connection with the poem’s title, the speaker’s awareness of audience in the first line indicates that this poem is not the speaker’s first attempt to tell this story i.e. this is a poem that is just as much about the speaker’s attempt to “try again” to tell the story, as it is about the speaker’s attempts to migrate. The poem’s final stanza illuminates further significance of the poem’s title, as the speaker reflects on the officer’s reasoning for advising the group: “He knew we would try again / and again, / like everyone does,” (62). The narrative within the poem leads us through the speaker’s journey and moves us from the specificity of his experience and consciousness of relaying it, all the way through to the collective experience he shared with other migrants. In the poem’s title, it is the “me” who will “try again” and the actual action here is left open to interpretation, while in the poem’s final stanza, it is the “we” who will “try again” and the action here unambiguously refers to crossing the border.

The poem’s first three stanzas reflect the speaker’s attempts to recall detail or otherwise to decide upon how he will relay this story. These three stanzas are marked by the speaker’s hesitation and confusion, as indicated by language like “I can’t say,” “I couldn’t remember / there were only five,/ or seven people—,” and “The rest…I don’t know.” The speaker’s flustered tone is reflected not only through this language but also formally through frequent enjambment and scattered spacing on the page. The stanzas are structured in such a way as to reflect the speaker’s own uncertainty about how he relays the story of what occurred during this moment in his migration journey. For example, “The rest…/ I don’t know. / They weren’t there,” progressively move in a downward diagonal pattern away from the page; the distance created physically on the page reflects the speaker’s distance from the thirty-six people from which he was separated, and perhaps also his distance from the full knowledge of what happened to them. It is not until the poem’s fourth stanza that the poem settles into a more direct, grounded storytelling pattern and adopts a more stable form. Although frequent enjambment and dispersed lines continue through the end of the poem, the stanzas are consistently two to three lines, which eases the narrative flow. As the poem stabilizes formally, the speaker’s tone shifts to encompass a wider political awareness as he analyzes the officer’s identity and how he defies the expectations of his occupational role in order to warn the migrants. The poem slows to enable further emphasis on instances of enjambment, as in: “He must’ve remembered his family / over the border,” which functions to give a double meaning to ‘over the border’ as it indicates both the family’s physical location as well as the officer’s prioritization of his family over his prioritization of his duty to the Border Patrol.

Works Cited:
Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2017. Print.