Interview with poet Luis Rodriguez

So Luis Rodriguez, right? Right. And you were born on the border of Latin America. Right. Paso dejas. OK. How did that growing up experience? How did that impact your work? What do you write about? Well, I think I have to write about this hiponization, this living in two worlds that Chicanos end up growing up with. Because actually, we lived in Mexico. We never lived in that puzzle. We were born in that puzzle, all the kids, because it's important to have American citizens in order for immigrants to come over. It'll help them get their legal residence. But I still lived in Mexico. So I was caught in this fissure, this kind of juncture between two worlds. And so that experience goes with you everywhere you go. You're always going across borders. You're always breaking borders. You're always living between two lands and two ideas and two modes. You're always like a caught between two different things. And I think that also informs a lot of what my work deals with. Can you tell any anecdotes and little stories about it? Well, the one that I remember that

has to do with having your children born in the United States is that a lot of Mexicanas would wait to the ninth month to have their baby. And some of them would just run over like crazy, grab the closest lampposts on the US side and just have their babies right on the pavement. As long as they could have these US born kids, I mean, that's kind of like the way that life was. The being and the US side was a treasure, something that you weren't for. But it didn't mean that you loved being American and then to do it that economic stability, maybe, because nobody wants to stop being Mexican regardless. So this issue of borders and separation of people whether they're imaginary borders or no, how do you see that in your life today as a journalist? Is it always working in one of our nation's big cities? Well, I begin to realize that that means that we are not so much an American phenomenon, but we really are an international one. I think that we have to look globally for who we are. Our literature, for example, should be recognized

as an international world literature, not just one of the American reality, because I think it straddles two realities in the straddles the world and the United States. It straddles the first world and the third world. I think we've got to be seen as a world literature, a proposed colonial literature linked to the African writings that came out of the last, after World War II, linked to the Native Americans and writings throughout the Americas. We have to just broaden who we are. You said that, right before you started interviewing, you said that people are sort of yearning for this kind of thing right now. Why do you think that is? What makes you think that's really happening? Well, because I think they've been estranged from it. They've been alienated from it. The voices that they knew growing up, the voices of their ancestors, the voices of families, they get diminished, diminished. You go to school, you go through work and those voices get less and lessened. I think people are looking to get back to them, looking to get back to, again, to some roots, to some something firm, something real,

something familiar. And the land or history or language, these are things we're going back to because they kind of root us, again. They kind of bring us some tangibility that we need. Well, who does this work serve most then? Is it for the Chicano people or do you serve others as well? I think it serves most. I think it serves Chicano's for different reasons. In many ways, it's for them in the avenue of light at the end of the tunnel, something that they can see, that they can do. Regardless of their experiences, they could be in prison, they could be welfare mothers, that they can relate to this literature, that is their literature, that they can contribute to it. In that sense, Chicanos gain a lot from the kind of writing that I do. But I also think that other people in this country gain, because, again, it roots us in this country. It gives us something that we can all hang on to.

I do readings in Chicago with Polish immigrants. I do it with white workers from Oklahoma, I do it among African American homeless people, and all of them find a connection. All of them can relate to what I'm getting at, even if I'm talking about Chicano experience, they can all find something that's real for them. So I think anybody can benefit from this work. And this speaks to a world that should be international. I think it needs to be, the point being that it shouldn't just be considered an American literary art form. I think Chicano writing has connections to the hemisphere, to Native Americans, throughout the Americas. It has, again, a post-colonial type of literature, you know, a lot of autobiography, a lot of family stories, stories from the neighborhoods, from the body, anti-colonial type positions. I think that's why it should be considered, as part of the world literature canon,

as much as it can be. And the connection you see it has to Mexican contemporaries. Are you looking to foster those types of connections for doing that sort of work? Yeah, definitely. I think it's very important to make those links. It's important. Well, for example, I started to do readings in Latin America, many Central America and Puerto Rico, and I've gone to Mexico, I plan to, my plan is to go to Mexico and do more readings and talk to more people. There's a lot of great literature coming out of Mexico. And right now, there's this big Mexican poetic renaissance that everybody's talking about, Octavio Paz, just won the Nobel Prize. And but there's a lot more out of Mexico that the world is beginning to take notice. I think we need to link up to it. We need a dialogue. We need to relate that Chicanos here, that Mexican is there, see where are literature links, but also where it kind of separates. I think it's important that that happen. So we can kind of find our place again again

in this world literature, this canon that I'm talking about. I think we need to do this. Otherwise, we separate ourselves and we're limiting what I think the power is behind Chicano literature. But historically, there's been some problems between Mexicans and Chicanos. Do you think that before these links can really be forged that these problems will be addressed and how and you should be just straightforward, outright, truthful, and truthful? Yeah, I think that's really the best thing. Because most of the problems between us are based on political. Somebody put a border on here, right? Somebody said, once you cross this one, you're completely different than from the other side. There's a superiority, inferiority relationship between these two countries. That has to change. And I think that we have to be open. We have to go through the process, which you say is painful. I think it is. But we have to talk. We have to find that there is more common between us and there is distinctions.

OK. Let me turn you now to that topic of last line, because I have like about 30 seconds left to take 40 and so forth. Yeah. We were talking a little bit about how that has informed your work, the concept, the philosophy of it. Well, because I think what comes through here is our history. We're not just immigrant people, like in Europe coming over here, this is really our land. It's been our land, historical. We're coming back to our own land. And I think that it's always with us. That history, that legacy doesn't die. It keeps coming, swinging at us, no matter where we're at. It comes from the 400 years that it's been our land. It comes from the fact that Mexican war happened and the land was taken away. It comes from the fact that we've had second class citizenship in the whole southwest region. So it just can't help but be part of what I do. I think the more aware you are of it,

the more you can address it. Our slang was nothing more than saying that this land is a colonial land. It needs to be free, independent, sovereign. It used to belong to Mexico, and yet now it's been taken away. And I think it's important to address it. Even if it's not a red hot issue, like it was, perhaps a few years ago, it still comes at us. So I think the more aware we are of it, the better we're going to be about what we're trying to say. Do you do anything new and different with how you're approaching that historical problem? The things that we have about this land? Yeah, pretty much, because I think all my work deals with this duality that we live as Chicanos, you know, knowing that we've been here longer than most anybody else. Our native heritage confirms us to the land. And yet, we're treated like strangers, second-class citizenship, we treat it like we don't belong. So I think it constantly keeps coming through the work. OK, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.