Soy Milk! A Chicana Poet on “Drinking” Poetry: An Interview with Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs

Abstract

Soy Milk! A Chicana Poet on “Drinking” Poetry:An Interview with Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs Aldo Ulisses Reséndiz (bio) INTRODUCTION Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is a Chicana poet, cultural worker and Professor at Seattle University in Modern languages and Women and Gender Studies. She is the author of a book of interviews with Chilean and Chicana writers and poets, Communal Feminisms: Chicanas, Chilenas and Cultural Exile (2007); a poetry collection, A Most Improbable Life (2002); first editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (2012); and the editor of Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena María Viramontes Critical Reader (2013). She is currently finalizing her debut novel, Fresh as a Lettuce: Malgré Tout. In 2011, she represented the United States in India as one of the featured poets at the Kritya International Poetry Festival. In this interview conducted in Seattle on September 16, 2013, Prof. Gutiérrez y Muhs talks about her upbringing, rooted in Latin America’s long-lasting oral tradition. Poetry has had a lasting impact on her life as a writer, since childhood. She remarks on how Latina/os are changing the public face of poetry in the U.S. today and elaborates on poetry’s magnetic power to heal. She then delves into the themes that both engage and challenge her in her writing, her attempts at balancing her academic and poet personas, and provides generous advice to aspiring poets to sustain themselves through poetry. Aldo Ulisses Reséndiz (AR): As we begin, you once shared with me that you were named after Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral, and you open up your book of interviews with Chicana and Chilean writers, Communal Feminisms: Chicanas, Chilenas and Cultural Exile, by mentioning her. How have Mistral and other Latin American poets influenced your being a poet? Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs (GGM): When I think of this slice of life belonging to my mother and other women who washed their clothes in a public vecindad, communally, and listened to Mistral [on the radio], I realize how important storytelling and poetry are. Most of these women were illiterate and definitely poor, and they preferred to listen to poetry, instead of music, which is what they would listen to when they would tune in to a radio station while they washed their clothes. My mother loved that name, Gabriela, which in the U.S. became Gabriella. I did not know Mistral was Chilean, everyone thought she was Mexican, and it was not until many years later that I realized this. This story truly tells the story of how interrelated the issues of social class are in Latin America, how small Latin America becomes when we talk about the poorest people, and how much in common they have among them, us. Mistral, Neruda, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—whom I read as a little girl in Mexico in grammar school—gave me the pride for poetry, its rhythm, the culture of becoming a poet. But popular music gave me poetry, too: our Latin American music is full of poetry, from the boleros and rancheras to Café Tacuba, they incubate poetry. AR: This reminds me of a line in “A most improbable life,” one of your most anthologized poems, where you also reminisce about reciting Amado Nervo’s rhymes to your father as a child. Can you expand on the differences you see on how poetry is both received and perceived in Latin America as opposed to the U.S.? GGM: Well, the subjectivity of “poet” does not really exist for American children, Mexican-American children, Latino children; you are not given that possibility in the U.S., it is simply not honorable or admirable to be a poet, except for maybe in hip-hop, which might explain why that is so popular among Latin@ adolescents. I still remember how my dad looked at me admiringly and lovingly when I recited that short poem I learned in first grade, which, by the way, I don’t think is Amado Nervo’s, but my dad, who was practically illiterate, did [think it was his]. But why did he think that? Because people in...