Luzma speaks

La Bloga: No soy el Google l�sbico isle�o

2011-12-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

La Bloga: No soy el Google l�sbico isle�o

An Open Letter to Rosemary Feal, President of the MLA

2011-05-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

My dearest colleague Rosemary,

I have read with almost tears in my eyes the MLA Newsletter(Volume 43, Number 2).Your Editor's Column tells me that I can be in peace that a new generation of people like you at the MLA take their turn to carry on the luchas that I and others can no longer carry in the world of academia. The President's Column, on the other hand, carries a line that was as if a life long dream had come true for me: "It is time to set a national goal of universal bilingualism." As one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Association for Bilingual Education and the National Association for Bilingual Education, I am glad to see that a day has come when a President of the MLA makes a statement like this one. I go further and say that the universe of every nation needs to thrive on multilinguistic education, including the languages of those that can only sign and the languages of new media.

Phyllis Franklin was President of the MLA when I went through my struggles with SUNY. She could not intervene to help me but she heard my pleas to her, some times written on a plain piece of paper and hand scripted because I could not afford a computer. Because of politics at the MLA, she could not intervene but she called a dear friend who is now retiring from Rutgers and told her to let me know that she had read my letters with caring and compassion.

I let you know that the only organization that has ever made me a member Emeritus for years of service is the MLA when they agreed to give me free membership last year after 35 years of paying my dues even when I was really not able to. I am glad to say that is the only Emeritus title that I need after reading your Newsletter.

My warm Puerto Rican embrace.

Dr.Luz-Maria (Luzma) Umpierre

My Grandfather- A Poem

2011-04-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

My Grandfather

I never met him.
He was a man in an Army uniform,
in a wedding photo that was kept
as a way of not forgetting his existence.
I never saw him.
I never held his hand or
felt his grandfatherly aftershave.
He had died in the building
of a Canal in Panamá
where no one could reclaim his body;
lost to me in time, distance and words
without a pitch.
And then, one winter day, I kept a promise
to those who told his story.
Alejandro C. Herrera.
In front of a marble, old grave military marker,
I saluted with tears the tomb
of a not so unknown soldier.

Luzma Umpierre

Gutierrez and Lolita--A House Taken

2011-03-04T04:26:00.000-08:00

Gutierrez and Lolita---A House Taken

This February and March of 2011, a Puerto Rican born in exile has taken a historic stance in reference to the ongoing violations of the Civil Rights of Puerto Ricans on the island being perpetrated by the government of Luis Fortuño. In listening to the two key speeches to date pronounced by Luis Gutierrez, I have been reminded of an event that took place in 1954, also at the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., the place from where Representative Gutierrez recently spoke. In 1954, another Puerto Rican made headlines around the World: a young attractive woman named Lolita Lebrón who led a group of Puerto Rican nationalist in an attack on that same House. In fact, historians tell us that some of the bullets fired on that day in 1954, left marks that are still visible in that Chamber of Congress. Lolita Lebrón, upon being questioned before the cameras on March 1, 1954, told the World that she had come not to kill but to die for her country.

Luis Gutierrez, who represents the City of Chicago, was born in December of 1953,a few months before the attack that rocked the Capitol in 1954. On the other hand, Lolita Lebrón had migrated to New York City before her actions. She was also an exiled. On the day of Lebrón’s sentencing on July 8, 1954, she found out at the hearing that her son had died. She broke down, not in grief over a decision that she expected, but before a sentence she did not expect: the sentence to life without her child. Lolita did not know that a few months before her son’s death, another young Puerto Rican had been born who would become a spiritual son of hers and her legacy in the denunciation on behalf of Puerto Ricans. Luis Gutierrez was a few months old on the day Lolita’s son died and she was sentenced for the attacks of 1954.

Ultimately, Lolita died in Puerto Rico in 2010 not being able to witness the new salvos that occurred at the House of Representatives this February and March by another Puerto Rican exiled. These new round of salvos required no bullets just a voice and a firing speech that came from within the House itself, because as Bronco Castro reminded me recently, Gutierrez not only spoke from the House floor but that he was IN THE HOUSE—he was an elected member of Congress.

In Humboldt Park in Chicago there is a mural that honors Lolita Lebron. I wonder if Gutierrez saw that mural while being raised and living in the city and imagined that one day the shots heard around the World would come from the power of his voice and arguments in a historical trajectory of defending our island nation before the cede of government of the people in these United States.

Ever since Gutierrez speech, I have been haunted by these two similarities and how I see Gutierrez as being a continuation of the events of 1954 at the HOUSE but now using the power of voice and one’s rights to speak before injustice. There is also power in the electorates in Chicago who brought a Puerto Rican to Congress at this juncture with the courage and audacity of conviction of Lolita.

In 2009, De Paul University in Chicago made the decision to acquire my personal papers to house them for life. Back then, I donated them in honor of the love I had for my cousin Jorge, who lived there when he was kicked out of the island because as a very young man, he could not find a job or a future, and Chicago gave him one. I also did it in gratitude to my dearest friend Dr.Lourdes Torres who teaches at De Paul. The fact that a Catholic University had accepted these papers was something not lost to Catholic organizations, and Kappa Gamma Pi carried an article on the importance of this acquisition because I am a Lesbian. I never thought that I would be more proud of having that collection housed in Chicago than today. Luis Gutierrez is the son of Lolita in words and spirit; by firing into the ceiling like her but with words he did what men in our island, who cherish their machismo, were incapable of doing: facing the forces of repression and denouncing them inside the HOUSE of the master.

My dearest French friend Isabelle Secretan has reminded me this morning, after listening to Luis Gutierrez second speech in the Chamber, of the following words: "Nowhere on earth will you find a people more difficult to silence than Puerto Ricans." In honor of my ancestors and the ancestors of Luis and Lolita I too speak: my immense gratitude to these two people of my ancestry who did not sit idle and impotent before injustice and abuse: they took heroic actions.

Luz Maria Umpierre
March 4, 2011

PS My gratitude to Nemir Matos Cintrón who insisted that I write my thoughts on these events for this blog.

La Veintiuna, the Minillas Tunnel and My Childhood

2010-10-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

La Veintiuna, the Minillas Tunnel and My Childhood

Whenever I am asked where I am from, I insist to say that my hometown is Santurce, Puerto Rico. This baffles people, and even computers, since they cannot understand why I don’t choose to say that I am from San Juan. For me, to identify the Capital of my island-nation as my birth place instead of Santurce would be to deny an important place in my history and in the history of the Island.

I was born in La Veintiuna in Santurce, so labeled because it was the twenty first stop of the trolley. By the time I was born, there were no trolleys but the name had stuck. La Veintiuna was a very poor neighborhood only rivaled in its poverty by El Fanguito, also in Santurce. La barriada stretched for two sides of Avenida Ponce de León. When I was born, I became a part of an extended family immediately.

Before I was born, my father had taken on to raise his sister’s family. Adelaida, or Doña Lala as they called her, had 8 children. As an infant, I was left with this aunt and she raised me along with her children because my mother became seriously ill after giving birth and, afterwards, she had to work to help my father support his family. We lived until I was 4 years old in la Calle Jobos, on the second story of what I cannot possibly call an apartment since it was a shack made of rotten wood. Most of streets were not paved, so we walked on dusty roads. My parents came to see me every day after work.

At the age of four, my father made the decision to move us all into one house on the other side of Ponce de León Avenue to a street called Calle Lloveras (609). Half of that Calle Lloveras still stands today and I will relate how it became half of a street further on. Our house had 5 bedrooms but 16 people lived in it. Besides my Aunt Lala and her 8 children (Luis, Jorge, Dolores, Milagros, Gladys, Lucy, Victor and Rafaela), my aunt Carmen, who had no children, also lived with us and as well as my paternal grandmother, whose name was Gregoria and they called Nena.

My father was also something called “comisario de barrio,” a work that he undertook without pay to help the people in our community with essential services. Yes, he was also a politician. Yes, he opened de offices of the Comité Popular every evening. However, what he actually did on a daily basis there was to find medical doctors who would take care of the poorest in our barrio, taking them to the hospital, distributing food, clothing and even arranging and paying for burials. At Christmas, he would get toys from the offices of the Major of the City of San Juan, who at the time was Felisa Rincón.

My father would gather the neighborhood at Christmas in a huge party in the streets in front of the barrio headquarters of the Popular Democratic Party on Calle Jobos (where Bellas Artes stands now). The day of the gathering we had children race in potato sacks, pick an apple from a barrel of water, and pin the donkey games. Christmas toys were distributed then and they came in brown shopping bags, not in fancy wrapping paper. For many of us, these were the only toys we would receive during the year. People in the neighborhood also received shopping bags with Christmas foods.

There were many people in our town who were homeless, like a man known as Juan Vaca who hung around the bus stop asking for limosnas for his alcohol dependency. My father took special care of him and found him places to sleep and clothes to wear and, most importantly, he demanded that Juan Vaca be greeted always with respect. At the time, we also had street vendors come to our neighborhood. Our morning produce came to us in a wheel cart driven and sold by a man called Pancho. From him we would buy basic fruits and vegetables for cooking. My aunt would also give him the leftover rice and beans from the day before so that he could feed his pigs.

We had other people walk the barrio selling goods or services: there was the quincallero (who, to my childhood fascination, was also a ventriloquist). He sold us hair pins (horquillas) and toiletries, the amolador who sharpened our knives, the ice cream vendor, who sold ice creams made with fresh fruits, and the oyster man who sold fresh oysters. There was also a local market called “Colmado Alejandro” where we would buy basic staples like rice and beans. We had many “cantinas,” like the “Tibiritabara,” where liquor was sold but where they also sold sandwiches and soft drinks for the children. My favorite sodas were Cola Champagne and Limonada. El Cotorrito (the transvestite club) was also in our neighborhood. Sylvia Rexach, that extraordinary composer, lived near the bus stop. This was a very poor but crucial location for “difference” in the 1950s.

My intention, in relating all of this, is not to glamorize poverty at all but to explain why I insist that I am a santurcina and not a sanjuanera. I have engraved too well in my memory waking up at night because cockroaches were crawling over me, bats were coming into my room, mice were roaming our house, shots were blasting at night, or thieves were coming in through our windows. I cannot possibly play now the role of Pollyanna. I know that these were not exclusive to La Veintiuna but I name them because my memories of the past are not rosy colored.

We were unable to afford having encyclopedias in our home on Calle Lloveras. However, our neighbor, a German extraction American, who we called Mr. Herger, had one and we were permitted to go into his living room to do research for school assignments. He was married to a Puerto Rican woman called Doña Sunta. They were better off economically than we were and could afford having a cook in their home. They owned a building, several stories high, where they rented rooms. The Hergers were the first in our neighborhood to have a television set and we were allowed to go into their living room every day around 5 PM to watch TV. This same family was very generous to us and at Thanksgiving (a rare holiday on the island back then but that they would celebrate) they sent us ½ a turkey with fixings so that we would enjoy the feast.

Next to our house lived the Abella family, one of the first Cuban exiles that I met in my life. In front of our house there was also a beauty salon and the hair dresser (Virginia Ruiz) was a part of our extended family. Very special to us too was a Puerto Rican nurse whose name was Consuelo Pizarro. She worked at the Hospital de Santurce, where my father had found her a job. Consuelo was in charge of giving us vaccines and injections when we needed them. On Mother’s Day, when all the motherly figures in our home were gathered to receive each a basket, Consuelo was included in the event because we would say that she was one of our mothers. There was also Dr. Gualberto Rabell who would do house visits for a minimal charge or nothing at all. He remained my family’s physician until the death of my mother in 1987.

As years passed, the land in Santurce became now coveted territory for the gentrification of our island. And so it happened that one day, we were told that an express way and tunnel were going to be built there. At first, the tunnel and highway were only going to use the terrains of our backyard. Our rented house would be spared as well as the entire Calle Lloveras. However, the original plans for what is today called The Minillas Tunnel demanded that Hospital Pavia be destroyed. Someone has told me recently that this fact is “an urban legend.” I was the Chair of one of the most prestigious Folklore Programs in the USA and I don’t want to be a vector. Urban legends, now called contemporary legends, normally do not have elements of specificity in them such as time and place. My father was an Assemblyman for the City of San Juan. In one of the committees he served in, the blue prints and plans for the express way and tunnel were discussed. So, I tend to believe that this fact was based on truth, if not in whole, at least in part. Be it what it may, it so happens that when the tunnel was built the hospital was spared while La 21 was destroyed and one of the sides of Calle Lloveras demolished. The plans went from having our backyard used in the construction to our home being totally destroyed.

We were sent letters telling us that we had the following options: we could relocate to a caserio that was “brand new”: Lloréns Torres, or accept the sum of $500, if one was a renter, and relocate on our own. The “glories” of moving to a “brand new caserio” were pushed heavily. I clarify, at the suggestion of a reader of an earlier version of this written memory, that the caserio was not really “brand new.” It was many years old. But, in comparison to the houses in our barrio, they were “condos” and that is what the powers that be stressed in order to have takers. Most of our barrio people moved to the caserio. A friend from my childhood and her parents, the Simounets, told us of a vacant apartment next to them in Calle Aldea and suggested that we moved there. We wanted to be able to stay in the heart of walkable Santurce so we took the $500 and moved to Calle Aldea.

Today, the side of the street of Calle Lloveras where I grew up is just a plot of grass to “beautify” the express way and the tunnel. So, if you are driving through the Minillas Tunnel and ask yourself why does it make a dramatic swerve when you come out of it going towards San Juan and the old Calle Europa, please remember, for me, that a whole way of life was shattered while the Hospital Pavia still stands on that precise curve. Be it urban legend, poor planning or island politics to preserve a hospital owned by a wealthy family, the truth is that my home was destroyed. If you have not heard a song called “Tumbaron la 21,” I suggest that you research it and hear it. I have the CD in my car and play it often to be reminded of my childhood barrio. The song repeats in its estribillo: “Tumbaron La Veintiuna.” I still have dreams at night in which our house on Calle Lloveras is spared. But those are only the dreams of an old soul that will always have her home in La Veintiuna.

Luz Maria (Luzma) Umpierre

My gratitude to Beatriz Ramirez Betances and to a reader of La acera who calls himself “Buho” for their suggestions for change and historical information.

In Memoriam-Rutgers, Poetry and Tyler Clementi

2010-10-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

IN MEMORIAM

“The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis, compounded by her inability to remember a poem.” (Alice in Wonderland)

Events of this week in the case of Tyler Clementi have come to remind me of many things that I left behind in time but of which I bear a scar. When I applied for the job of Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in 1978, I was almost not hired because I was “only a poet.” Poetry back then never qualified you for tenure. Rutgers, at that time, had made that fact very clear by tenuring Victor Fernández Fragoso in Puerto Rican Studies but not promoting him in rank to Associate Professor. This insult still resonates with me as he was both a pioneer in Gay Poetry and an exquisite human being. I was finally hired because, once again, my former professor, John Deredita, intervened to assure the Provost that I had the makings of a research/critic in me.

While working at Rutgers, my second book, En el país de las maravillas, was completed. However, the book was finalized while I was living in Kansas with a woman I had fallen in love with. I had been awarded a Ford Foundation Scholarship to study Literary Theory at the University of Kansas under the guidance of Andrew Debicki and John Brushwood. Although I knew that my poetry was not going to count towards tenure, I concentrated at that time on both writing my book: “Nuevas aproximaciones críticas a la literatura puertorriqueña contemporánea,” and finishing the collection En el país… My stay in The Sunflower State composed the best years of my life. I found there a true respect for my voice as a Puerto Rican scholar and poet. Andrew Debicki, that extraordinary mentor of mentors, understood my need to write creatively and encouraged me to sit in his seminar on Peninsular Poets. From those classes, I found that I had a similar voice to Spanish Poet Gloria Fuertes. My poems had a humorous vein back then (a resonance that critic Nancy Mandlove has called a “Cosmic Carcajada”) and Fuertes’ humor reinforced my belief that I could transcend the alien/nation of US society through poignant humor.

When I returned to Rutgers from Kansas, I prepared my package/papers for tenure. However, I was consistently being told and reminded that my poetry would not count towards it by some of my colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I was advised to leave my creative work out of my tenure papers. This I found to be dual/speak since Rutgers had given tenure to a male poet in the Department of English on the merits of his creative work. Thinking about it, I now realize that both Victor’s poetry and mine were not to be counted because we wrote in Spanish, and I used code switching. Most importantly,we were both openly Gay while the tenured colleague in English flirted with his bi/sexuality and used his misogyny as a powerful tool to help the system. On the week of the vote for my tenure, a colleague paraded one of my poems down the departmental hallways on College Avenue to show that I was a Lesbian who had been published in 13th. Moon (a Lesbian Journal). The paraded poem, which was dedicated to one of my female colleagues, was taken to infer that I was “in love” with this co-worker. At the time, I was in a committed relationship with someone who did not work at Rutgers. The poem had been dedicated to my colleague as a way of thanking her for her support of my partner and me as Lesbians. To make a long story short, I did, against advice, include my poetry in the package for tenure and the Appointments and Promotions committee chose to ignore it. However, I was granted tenure because I had two books of literary criticism and 12 articles and, therefore, there was no way to argue that I was not a scholar but “only a poet.”

A few years after being granted tenure, I was the sole witness to the suicide of one of my colleagues who was very close to me and who had emotional problems and identity issues. He felt isolated and shunned. He was also physically disabled. In front of my eyes and after I made an attempt to save him, he ran away from me and threw himself into the Raritan River. This week, when Tyler Clementi, another precious soul at Rutgers, threw himself from the George Washington Bridge, it was for me as if nothing had changed at Rutgers in 25 years. At the time when my colleague committed suicide, his body was not recovered for months and my colleagues in the Spanish Department, who by then could not take that a vocal, open Puerto Rican Lesbian had been granted tenure, divulged profusely the rumor that I had made up the story of my colleague’s suicide.To them, someone who openly spoke of her Lesbian identity and demanded the inclusion of Gay and Lesbian texts in the curriculum had to be insane. The only people who took my witness account seriously were the police in New Brunswick, N.J. and regular folks in town who had no ties to Rutgers. Three months after that fateful December day in which I was a witness to this horrific tragedy, the body of my colleague was found near shore in Perth Amboy on the exact same day that my mother died.

The tormenting and suicide of Tyler Clementi this last week, then, were not “foreign” to me. They underscored my belief that a system that does not value the gentle souls that they have in their midst and condones acts of homophobia against them, should not be called a univers/ity. There is no universal acceptance at Rutgers and in academia for difference. These systems thrive and survive on hatred, capitalistic competition and the need to maintain an “image” of tolerance which, in my estimation, is just a smoke and mirrors show to continue attracting “clients” to their business. And, within that system of production, distribution and prices for commodities --goods and services—a diploma, the gentle souls of poetry and music of Tyler Clementi, my colleagues: Victor Fragoso and Mitchell, and so many others are swallowed mercilessly en el país de las maravillas. Unlike Alice in Wonderland, who I have quoted at the beginning of this memoriam, however, I did not have an identity crisis at Rutgers because I did remember poetry as a way of battling a system. And it was because of poems and writing them, in spite of the disdain for creative work there, that I had survived. In honor of those who did not, today I bear witness.

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."(Tennyson, In Memoriam)

Poem read in Puerto Rico

2009-12-10T16:16:00.000-08:00

To a beautiful illusion
Bella Ilusión (danza)
　
for Sylvia Plath
　
I look at a picture of your grave full of wild weeds
and I want to dig in and press myself against your skeleton
and kiss each emptiness
and pretend that the grass growing is your sex.
I want to take you out walking down the streets of L.A.,
Sylvia,
I want you to smell the odor of gasoline in the air,
a premonition of yours nobody understood: the pollution of our minds, of our bodies.
I want you to see people lined up for the psychiatrist,
the young suicides,
mothers who leave milk
for their children while they sleep;
mothers who had no choice,
mothers abandoned,
mothers empty
who weave another kind of stove gas
every day without knowing
that you had shown them a way.
I want you to walk arm in arm with me
and raise your voice from
your skeleton
and whisper in my ear softly, arousingly,
that you want to make love on the beach at Cape Cod, under the sun,
and in Provincetown
city of ultraviolet power
where once they tried
to lock you up
where you return today
laughing, at my side,
to watch barges and
whales.
It's February again, Sylvia.
For the time being, it's not freezing;
stamps have gone up
in price and they have a different image
but they can still be bought in the middle of the night
by nocturnal poets
to send their poems home
to the mother.
Come take my arm, walk with me.
I too am returning this February
from far away.
Let's make love on the shore
while the waves break and penetrate,
waves sent to us
from far away by an island.
I see your abandoned grave
and I want to press myself
. . . and I kiss
and pretend
and the salt
and the calcic
fill my mouth
and I know, Sylvia,
that on this night
of this February warmer than usual
I love you.
　
　
(Translated by Patsy Boyer and Luz María Umpierre)
　
　
[When will we bring the remains of Sylvia Plath home?]

Review of De Bellaqueras to appear in Chasqui

2009-11-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

Torres, Daniel. De bellaqueras. San Juan/ Santo Domingo: Isla Negra Editores, 2009.
The poems in this collection by Gay Puerto Rican writer and critic Daniel Torres were written between 1981 and 2009. I still remember the day that I discovered, via the Internet, a poem dedicated to Santo Torres Rosado and me which is included in this collection. I read the poem then and found it highly colloquial in its language and persuasive in its tone. “Aurelia does exist,” I said to myself. These same parameters of the colloquial and the persuasive guide this entire collection of extraordinary poems which cover decades of work on a craft to its mastery.
The book is divided into three segments: “Del placer a la seducción y otras formas del deseo,”Hombrecitos de papel” and “Amarte con toda la locura del semen tibio.” At first read, this collection shows poems highly erotically charged. However, high artistry is placed in saying things that belong to the profane in Spanish but to the intellectual in a manner reminiscent of poets like San Juan de la Cruz who wrote about religious ecstasy to masquerade the erotic. In turn, the reverse occurs in this oeuvre: the almost “religious” fervor toward the beloved bodies turns into exquisite erotism.
My second reading, however, showed me a semiotic occurrence which I had not followed since I read and spoke about Lezama’s work in poetry and about the work of Pedro Juan Soto in narrative many years ago. My discovery in this second reading unveiled to me the recurrence of the vocal “o” consistently and systematically in the words of the collection as a further erotic sign, elevated to the visual and auditory. The first poem that raised this to my attention is called “No.” The poem, at first, reminded me of another poem, one by recently deceased Uruguayan writer Idea Villariño. Villariño’s poem is called “Decir No.” I do not know if this poem was in the “horizon of expectations” of Torres, but it certainly evoked in me its simplicity and its profound meaning. Most of the words in this poem, and every verse in it, have words with “o” or double “os.” Examples are: “hechos, fueron, desmintiendo, llevando, todo” while using and “o” itself in the last verse which reads: “o todo se sabe.”
Visually, this repetition of a sign—the letter O, is highly charged for this reader since it shows the actual physiological opening of the body in a collection populated with images of homoerotic love. The consistent use of words with “o” in this poem and in this collection, gives me grounds to affirm that consciously or subconsciously our writer was engaged in “plasmar” in a visual way, much like in Lezama’s Fragmentos a su imán, the erotic locus of penetration. In Christian iconography, the “O” is sometimes also symbolic of the omega. This idea is present in William Ong’s Christological reading of Hopkins’s “The Windhover,” a poem in which ecstatic states are also present. “Sala de lectura,” the poem that follows “No,” concentrates itself on the words “reojo,” “ojos” “olor” to name but a few. This in code, to a Gay or Lesbian reader, is a sign again of the duality of the words—visually and rhetorically. I suggest that a future study of this repetitive sign in this collection may unveil what I call in my homocritical theory of reading “A Gay (Lesbian), reading.”
The second segment of poems, “Hombrecitos de papel,” has multiple semiotic meanings also. We are not only dealing with “hombrecitos” who showed up in the poetic voice’s life in encounters. These are also men of paper not only cartoonish but also part of the act of writing itself. The poems are dedicated to several men by using their first names. This segment of the collection, in my estimation, is actually less about the erotic than about the act of writing. Poem 1 begins with the words “Voy a escribir/ después de tanto tiempo.” The imagery in these refers to hands, and hands that meet in illicit places. While evoking the actual holding of hands or the usage of hands for sexual pleasure, the recurring image brought to this reader more associations with the craft of writing. Thus, I propose that this section of poems should be further studied as metapoetry and not only for its obvious homoerotic value.
The final segment is literally saturated by the sign “semen.” Concurrent with my second reading, I looked for the artistry of writing encoded in them. This appears from the very first poem in that segment in which we find the verse “La poesía se nos paró en la mesa sin pan.” The title of this poem is “Arte Homo-Erótica” which openly addresses what I have been talking about in this review—the collection has to be studied within the parameters of metapoetry and semiotics.
With this collection, Daniel Torres shows to us what meaningful poetry is and should be---a system of words that take us from the simple “de bellaqueras” (the homoerotic), to the suggestive “De bella que eras” that María Arrillaga insightfully calls to our attention in the introduction. “La bella que eras” is poetry itself—bella (beautiful) as she was and gorgeous as she shall be in all future works by our author.

Luz María Umpierre (Luzma)
Poet, Independent Scholar, Human Rights Advocate

New Poem Translated

2009-11-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

Translation of Spanish poem from hoja

Weaver of dreams
today you gift me your scarf
of turquoise threads of your mother’s blue,
lost in her knitting, her dream.

Island weaver,
the tenderness of the knit
pierces my thinning life
abracing with needles
my entrails in your interfold.

Weaver of metaphors,
turquoises that blaze
you loop the small inroads of emptiness
in my alma and
in your intertwine,
I see a quietude
a mother in repose,
an infant girl afloat
from her womb--
her soul,
a shredded mesh.
Spin, my weaver, your pain
construct your own abode,
compose all of your laments
into a braid
and gift it to the waters back home.
Weaver of poems, my weaver,
Your mantle is our island of hope.

Luzma Umpierre

My remarks at Opening of my collection-De Paul U.

2009-11-11T06:04:00.000-08:00

I wish to begin by thanking Rafaela Weffer and Kathryn De Graff for making the acquisition of my papers an easy task for me. Thank you to Geoff Pettys who dealt with the mailings and the everyday minutia of getting the collection here, and last but not least, my most sincere gratitude to Lourdes Torres who has always behaved towards me as a sister, daughter, friend and colleague—it was her presence here at De Paul that convinced me to make the decision to donate them. My gratitude to my daughter Moira Finley for giving me the love I needed in my life in order to survive the most humiliating inflictions done on my person and come out of them with a sense of fortitude and inner strength. I am honored to be accompanied here today by my partner in poetry Nemir Matos Cintrón, a luminary in the World of Puerto Rican Lesbian literature and the true pioneer of Lesbian poetry on the island. Her presence makes this day have reflections of historic proportions since it is the first time ever that we appear together at any event.
When I was little, I used to hear stories about my cousin Jorge who migrated to Chicago looking for a better life outside our island. I vividly recall a picture of him with a hat and heavy coat on the streets of this great city and that reflection and the memories of his exile are with me today. Chicago has always been a gran urbe to Puerto Ricans and it is with both a sense of duty and pride that I attend this opening today. Duty because it is our duty to leave a trail for the younger generations and those who come after us that will explain our indelible presence in the history of this city. Pride because it is a Catholic College that decides to defy the stigmas and admit the collection of papers of an open Lesbian woman of color. I am humbled by your generous spirit and indeed for making real for future generations of Latinos De Paul’s motto “I will show you the way to wisdom.” This is one of the greatest honors of my life and I am glad to be sharing it with all of you here today. Thank you!

Opening of my collection-remarks by Dr. Lourdes Torres

2009-11-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Luzma Umpierre Collection Opening – November 6, 2009
Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming today to join us as we celebrate the Opening of the Luzma Umpierre Collection. Before introducing Luzma, I would like to publically recognize some of the folks who have worked with us on this project and have helped to organize today’s event. Many thanks to the director of libraries, Linda Morrissett, the staff here at Special Collections, particularly, Geoffrey Pettys and Morgan Macintosh Hodgetts, as well as the staff of the Center for Latino Research specifically, Assistant Director Maria Isabel Ochoa and our Administrative Assistant, Cristina Rodriguez. I would also like to recognize some special guests who have travelled a long way to honor Luzma today, her daughter Moira Finley, and her compañera, Nemir Matos Cintrón, who is also an accomplished Puerto Rican poet.

I am especially grateful to two wonderful colleagues who really made it possible for us to bring this collection to DePaul. I will introduce them and ask them to say a few words. First, I would like to thank Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Rafaela Weffer who was immediately receptive when I approached her, seeking help to bring Luzma’s papers here. Rafaela has a long history of supporting the work of all faculty but especially faculty of color at DePaul. She immediately recognized the importance of this project and did all she could to ensure that this collection found a home here.

I was also heartened by the enthusiastic response of Kathryn DeGraff, when I discussed the idea with her. Kathryn is the Head of Special Collections and Archives at DePaul and she has done much to encourage faculty members to bring the papers and records of Latin Americans, Latinos and women to DePaul’s Special Collections archives; we are grateful for that encouragement and for the incredible professionalism and care with which she handles these treasures.

Now it is my great pleasure to introduce our honored guest, Dr. Luz Maria Umpierre.

Luz María Umpierre is a human rights activist, poet, and scholar. She is widely recognized for her important writings on lesbian sexuality, the Puerto Rican immigrant experience, and bilingualism.

Luzma was born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She studied at the Sacred Heart Academy and at la Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, graduating from both with honors. After several years of teaching at Academia Maria Reina, she came to the United States in 1974 to pursue a Ph.D. in Spanish at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, which she completed in 1978. After receiving her Ph.D., Umpierre went on to teach at several institutions, including Rutgers University SUNY Brockport, Western Kentucky University, and Bates College. She has held numerous fellowships from institutions such as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the University of Kansas, and the Milano School at The New School for Management and Urban Policy in New York.

Luzma has a long career as a human rights activist. She has been an advocate for victims of discrimination in state and at private colleges and she is involved in work for the rights of the disabled. She has worked with the Red Cross, the Ford Foundation, and Amnesty International on different Human Rights projects. Because of her advocacy, Luzma has received dozens of awards. For example in 2003 The United States Congress passed a proclamation naming her a Distinguished Woman in Maine. Rep. John Baldacci, now Governor of the State, signed the proclamation. In 2004, the Modern Languages Association held a special session at their yearly convention to honor Luzma for her poetry and humanitarian work. And in 2008, the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón also honored Luzma with their Distinguished Alumnae Award.

In addition to her human rights work, Luzma is an internationally renowned scholar and poet. She has published five books of poetry and two chapbooks or "hojas poéticas". She is the author of two groundbreaking books of literary criticism focusing on Puerto Rican literature and has penned over 100 essays and book chapters many of which are about Caribbean literature and women authors. Her work has received significant critical attention, particularly from feminist and queer scholars.
Luzma is a trailblazer in many respects; for instance, she is recognized for advancing what she calls a "homocritical" theory of reading. She argues that homosexual readers can be more attuned to perceiving hidden queer meaning in literary work that is not explicitly homosexual. She has demonstrated this critical technique in some of her most important essays. Luzma was an early advocate and practitioner of the use of code-switching in literary works and a she is a strong advocate of bilingualism in our communities and in education. Since the 70s, Luzma has been advocating for the inclusion of issues of sexual orientation, gender, race, class, and ethnicity across the curriculum.
These days, too often, we take for granted the fact that we can teach and take courses in Puerto Rican Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies. However, it is important to acknowledge the many individuals who came before us, those who recognized the gaps in academia, the fact that the lives and the scholarship of people of color, and gays and lesbians were invisible or marginalized in universities and published scholarship. These pioneers took it upon themselves to carve a space in academia for this important work. This often involved heroic struggles against the establishment that did not consider that these were legitimate areas for scholarship or teaching. Luzma is one of the pioneers of Latin American and Latino Studies, Women’s Studies, and Sexuality Studies. Through her scholarly work and her poetry, she has helped to establish these fields as valid areas of scholarship. This groundbreaking work is never easy and it often comes at a cost for activist scholars such as Luzma. Luzma has experienced a number of well-documented legal struggles due to workplace discrimination at the many institutions where she sought to be out as a Puerto Rican lesbian poet and scholar and where she worked to enact change, diversify the curriculum, and support people of color, and gay and lesbian faculty and students.
As one of those students who Luzma has mentored, I am so pleased that we have the honor of having her collection here at DePaul. I don’t know if Luzma remembers when we first met, but I certainly do. We met over 25 years ago, when I was a graduate student in the Spanish Department at University of Illinois in Urbana. Luzma came to read her poetry at our campus at the invitation of our mutual friend and colleague, linguist Bill Van Patten. I listened in awe and was really excited when Bill invited me to dinner. He knew it would be important for me to connect with this incredible woman. As a young Puerto Rican semi-closeted graduate student, it was amazing to me that one could be an accomplished scholar and teacher and an out queer Puerto Rican. Luzma immediate took me under her wing and provided mentorship for many years. As I began my academic career, she did things that were so important for me as a young scholar; she invited me to speak at her university when I was still just a young punk; she introduced me to other Latino/a scholars and queer scholars; and she invited me to participate on panels on Latino literature at important conferences like the MLA. In short, she really helped me find my way in academia. And what’s truly amazing is that I know I was not the only one she cared for: there are so many of us: lesbians, and gay men, Puerto Ricans, Latinos, African Americans, and others from communities or walks of life usually dismissed by academia, who have succeeded because of Luzma’s love, guidance and mentorship.So, in recognition of her poetry, her scholarship, her human rights activism, and her mentorship of so many, I am delighted that we can honor her life’s work by ensuring that her legacy will be preserved at DePaul though the establishment of the Luz Maria Umpierre Collection.

Women of Color and Health Care

2009-10-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

People Over Politics: Pass Health Care Reform Now

While I am not a Republican, I have voted for Olympia Snowe because I trust her judgement as a policy-maker to truly represent women of color. The family tragedies – many of them health-related – that she endured in her life since an early age give her a special kinship with Maine’s residents who struggle to overcome adversity. Senator Snowe has proven herself worthy of my vote once again: this week, Senator Snowe broke ranks with her party to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill.

The people of Maine need health reform. The number of uninsured people in Maine has increased from 129,000 in 2001 to 137,000 in 2008. For those who do have insurance, they have seen the cost steadily rise: premiums for Maine residents have increased 105% since 2000. Policy-makers may be talking about pre-existing conditions and reimbursement rates, but the rest of us just want to be able to go to the doctor and get the care we need without breaking the bank.

Far too often, those without health insurance can be found among Maine’s increasing minority population. A Latina woman in the cities will go without the care or medications that she needs, because there is no way she can afford paying for them even though she holds two jobs. Some Asian women have reported skipping mammogram tests because of cultural and language barriers. Other mothers of all backgrounds have chosen between feeding their children and going to the doctor.

Women of color play a central role in the United States at every level and are a growing demographic. By 2042, “minorities” or people of color will be the majority of the U.S. population and women of color will take on an even greater share of the decision making in our nation. They play a central role in our families, often caring for parents and children; in our communities, leading organizations; and in professional circles as lawyers, college presidents and corporate CEO’s.

Despite the growing importance of women of color in our society, we are disproportionately uninsured or underinsured nationwide. While 61% of all Americans report having employer-sponsored health insurance, that number is substantially lower for women of color. Only 41% of Latinos and 52% of African Americans report having employer sponsored health care. Nearly four in ten Latinas and one in four African American and Asian women are uninsured. In addition, women of color are also more likely to have a chronic or pre-existing condition and spend a greater portion of their income on health care than others.

As our leaders continue to debate this issue among themselves, they must keep these women in mind as they reform health care. We need health care reform that ensures that everyone in the U.S. receives equal access to health coverage throughout their lives. We need health care that is affordable and accessible wherever we live and whatever language we speak. All women and girls, despite the political tumult, need access to the full array of reproductive health services.

Under intense pressure, Senator Snowe stood strong to do the right thing for the people of Maine. Senator Susan Collins needs to follow Olympia's humanitarian lead. There is no time to delay. Pass health care reform now.