Martin Espada at TCC

TCC kicked off 2007 Hispanic Heritage Month with a poetry reading and speech by the internationally recognized poet Martin Espada. Dr. Gabriela Toletti, TCC Spanish professor, opened the Sept. 18 event talking about the history of Hispanic Heritage Month. Dr. Quintin Bullock, TCC’s Virginia Beach Campus provost, had the honor to introduce Espada.

Born in Brooklyn in 1957, Espada has Puerto Rican roots and a deep love for the Latino community. With his renowned passion, Espada immediately captured the audience by using poetry to address the 2007 Hispanic Heritage Month topic of “Hispanic Americans: Making a positive impact on American society.” Intertwining his reading with insightful commentary on Puerto Rican culture, his family background and Latino socio-political issues, he chose poems from his collection Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002. In these poems Espada celebrates the resilience, struggles and contributions of the Latinos throughout the United States.

Espada’s first poem, “En la Calle de San Sebastian,” immediately transported the more than 100 listeners - including members of a poets club - to Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico. His words evoked the rhythms and melancholy of Puerto Rican music, especially music brought to the island by the Africans, while integrating the presence of the Boriquen (Taino indigenous tribe) and the colorful palette of the Puerto Rican streets. The poetry journey continued with “Coca Cola and Coco Frío” that showed Puerto Rico from the point of view of a 10-year-old Espada who could not understand in his first visit to Puerto Rico why his relatives praised everything foreign, for example Coca Cola, at the expense of the small many miracles around them. While tragically funny, this poem is also full of hope, depicting the moment when the poet realized the uniqueness, beauty and flavor of the Puerto Rican culture: “The boy tilted the green shell overhead and drooled coconut milk down his chin; suddenly, Puerto Rico was not Coca-Cola or Brooklyn, and neither was he.”

Espada proceeded with a series of “Work Poems” in which he celebrates the positive contribution that Latinos make to American society though their hard work. He depicts the working conditions of Latino farmers; he addresses the dilemma of the thinking janitor who is seen by what he cleans, not by his thoughtful mind; and he talks about the many jobs that he himself has had in his life. Besides being an acclaimed poet, Espada is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also a former tenant lawyer who fought for the rights of poor Latino immigrants. In his formative years he had several odd jobs such as working in a printing lab that manufactured legal pads. Ten years later in law school he “knew that every legal pad was glued with a sting of hidden cuts, that every open law book was a pair of hands upturned and burning.” As a young poet Espada made several poetry readings in prisons and in high schools and was surprised to find out that there is a higher percentage of people writing poetry in prisons than in colleges. He dedicates some poems to the Latino prisoners who he tries to inspire through his poetry to help them lead future fruitful lives when released.

Through his poetry he also explores topics of culture shock and social stereotypes. The poem, “My Native Costume,” for example, shows how there are certain expectations about how other cultures should sound, look and dress. He based his poem on an actual conversation he had with a teacher before he visited a middle school in the suburbs of Boston. “When you come to visit,” said the teacher from the suburban school, “don’t forget to wear your native custom.” So he went to the suburban school - embroidered guayabera, short-sleeved shirt over a turtleneck - and said, “Look kids, cultural adaptation.” Another poem of cultural misunderstandings and generational differences, “Thanksgiving,” depicts the first time he had Thanksgiving dinner with his wife’s American family. His in-laws never discovered this unflattering but extremely realistic poem because, as he explained, “The best place in the world to hide a poem is between the covers of a book.”

The two last poems of the evening, “Sleeping on the Bus” and “Alabaza,” were probably the most powerful of the evening. The first focuses on the civil rights movement and the Freedom Riders. He dedicated the poem to his father who was arrested in 1949 for not going to the back of the bus in Biloxi, Miss. This incident, Espada explained, made his father decide what to do with the rest of his life. He began to organize and worked for the civil rights movements next to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others. Espada describes his father as an unsung hero unnamed in history books but who must not be forgetten; people like his father made it possible to attain the freedoms, rights and opportunities in the United States today.

Despite these societal changes, Espada thinks there is still much more to be done in the arenas of civil rights and equal opportunities. “Alabanza” - an extremely moving and powerful poem - means praise in Spanish. This is a 9/11 song of praise for the food service workers at the Windows on the World restaurant who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. In this poem he praises and remembers those immigrants who were invisible in life and who became even more invisible in death. Espada explains that, as a poet, the only thing he can do to bring those people back is to bring them back in a poem. “Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen could squint and almost see their world.”

Espada knows how to reach his audience with his words, thoughts and images. But the magic of his poetry doesn’t rest only in written words; it’s also in his mode of delivery - rhythmic, powerful and heartfelt. He definitely was the epitome of Hispanic American month. Espada is genuine, speaks his mind and is true to his own identity and heritage. Through his carefully crafted poems he has made and continues to make a positive impact on American society, thereby representing a large number of Latinos trying to make their own positive contribution to the United States.

It was definitely an honor and a privilege to have Martín Espada as our 2007 TCC Hispanic Heritage Month Keynote Speaker.
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By Gabriela Toletti, Ph.D.