Poet and activist Martin Espada gave a reading of his poetry at Amherst College’s Converse Hall on Wednesday. Espada, who is currently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, also recounted his personal experiences in other jobs in a number of fields, and how they, as well as his Puerto Rican heritage, inspire his work.
Espada read approximately a dozen poems, describing the background and creative process of each before giving a dramatic reading.
Throughout his performance, he blended humor with more serious observations about Latino culture and its place in a white-dominated system. He used the issue of “Anglo-owned Mexican restaurants” to address the assimilation of Mexican food into American culture, while erasing its origins so it is “non-threatening” to WASPs. “I mean, what the hell is a wrap anyway? That’s a damn tortilla,” he exclaimed, to both laughter and nods of recognition from those gathered. He also read a poem titled, “For My Cousin Esteban Who Works at a Restaurant in Cambridge Massachusetts and is Forbidden to Wait Tables because he Wears Dreadlocks.”
Several other poems focused on cultural issues with the same blend of seriousness and humor. Another popular selection with the audience was a poem about Espada’s first Thanksgiving dinner with his wife’s family.
“I hope this goes up on a calendar someday, though the odds are against it,” he deadpanned. “My wife’s family is from Rocky Hills, Conn. No rocks. No hills. Just a lot of white people and an increasing Puerto Rican population in Hartford that has become the Boogie Man, coming into their window to steal their VCR. Imagine their delight when she brought the Boogie Man home.”
The poem, an anecdote about Espada’s father-in-law’s obsession with, and ownership of, a cannon, and a loud demonstration of it in the back yard, ends with the line, “When the first drunken Pilgrim dragged out the cannon at the first Thanksgiving, that’s when the Indians left.”
The audience seemed delighted with the poem, and especially with Espada’s theatrical performance.
“I have a background in radio drama,” he explained. “It helps when I want to do people’s voices.”
He added a special message to the Amherst College audience: “So when you’re sitting in front of your family’s Thanksgiving feast, think of this poem, and then laugh out of context.”
Some poems, however, were more seriously delivered than others. There was no laughter during Espada’s reading of “The Janitor’s Garden,” which concerned the almost 500 Puerto Rican people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
“In every single office building in Manhattan, there’s a shadow army that passes through and makes that building run,” Espada said. “[Since the attacks] so many Puerto Rican dreams are dead and no one in the American media is paying attention to that.”
Espada also worked commentary on the craft of writing into his performance. He dedicated one poem, “Poet in the Box,” about a prison inmate who deliberately tries to be put in solitary confinement so that he can write “to the young poets here tonight and the poets who are thinking about how to dedicate themselves to writing poetry.”
After he finished his reading, Espada opened the floor to discussion. Several audience members steered him toward contemporary political issues with their questions, particularly that of bilingualism and education.
“I worry about the educational reforms against English as a second language and bilingual education that are coming to Massachusetts,” Espada commented. “I think they’re narrow-minded, xenophobic and stupid.”
Another student asked him how he started writing.
“I was a terrible student,” Espada answered. But, he said, “In tenth grade I had a really good teacher, Mr. Valeca. He had a group of us make our own version of New Yorker Magazine. By the time the work had been divided up, a poem was the only thing left for me to do. I didn’t want to fail English again, so I wrote my first poem then, at the age of 15.”
He said that this experience was a pivotal one for him.
“I discovered that I loved words and I loved banging them into each other and watching them fly around the room, sometimes fly out the window,” he said, adding that “I’ve essentially been writing on the same subjects, of social justice and culture, since the age of 15.”
Espada also said that his audience plays an important role in his work to be both an artist and an activist with his poetry.
“[Social] change doesn’t come from the White House,” he said. “It comes from our house. It starts with imagination, with an act of political imagination. But I cannot imagine alone, so I ask you to imagine with me.”
