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My
piece is called Beyond Survival: A Politics/Poetics of Puerto Rican Consciousness,
and for the purposes of our reading tonight I’ve cut out a lot of
the piece -- what I consider the more theoretical parts of the piece and
go straight to the testimonio. I began my piece with a poem which I wrote.
I’ll read it first in Spanish and then in translation then my essay:
deducarse al rescate de un poeta
de las garras del bilinguisimo colonial
no es cosa facil.
es rescatar a la vez memoria, escribir historia,
inventarse imagenes que lleven las lagunas,
invetarse a uno mismo como hecho innegable,
es dejar dicho: fui, as que fuimos;
soy, asi que somos, y seguiremos siendo.
es agacharse en las estaciones del subway
y documentarse, escribiendo obsesivatmente en libretas,
en cualquier hoja de papel: estoy y escribo.
Rescuing a poet
from the claws of colonial bilingualism
is not an easy thing.
It means rescuing memory, writing history,
inventing images to fill in the blanks,
inventing oneself as an undeniable fact,
Leave having said: I was, therefore we were;
I am, therefore we are; and we will continue being.
It means squatting in the subway stations
and documenting oneself, writing obsessively in notebooks,
or on any piece of paper: I am here and I write.
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