By Taylor Shaw
On Monday, Fordham’s English department hosted its annual Reid Family Writers of Color Reading. This year’s event featured Rigoberto González, author of multiple full-length poetry books, bilingual children’s books, novels and memoirs. At the event, he read aloud one short poem, “witch” and a longer piece, “Adelina.”
In preparation for the event, the English department encouraged professors to incorporate his work into their curriculum and students to read one of his works: Autobiography of My Hungers. The electronic version of this book is available on the Fordham University Library website.
Autobiography of My Hungers is a non-fiction account of González’s experiences and struggles with childhood poverty, hunger, sexual orientation, mental illness and much more. It is written in a series of poems and prose. The Fordham Ram had the opportunity to interview him prior to the event and discuss this work.
The Fordham Ram: This work is such a unique collaboration of structures and styles, melding poetry with autobiography, balancing and exploring a variety of emotions and experiences. How would you describe your writing process in approaching this book, stylistically, emotionally, practically? How did you—or specifically your hungers—know you were ready to write an autobiography?
Rigoberto González: This was a decision that I made after 20 years. I knew that I was eventually going to write about dealing with childhood hunger. I didn’t write about it in my first memoir, “Butterfly Boy.” I needed time because whenever I tried to write that, it was too painful; I’d freeze, I’d cry and I thought, ‘This is not healthy. I have to wait until I’m a little more mature, build that resistance to pain.’ Finally, I got to that moment, and even then it was hard. So I thought, ‘I can’t really write these long extended essays. It takes a lot of energy. What if I do it piecemeal, little by little, piece by piece, bit by bit?’ That’s how I formed the length. I needed to give myself some kind of vessel. Out of the blue, I thought, ‘What if I write these pieces that are no more than 300 words each? That’ll make them bite sized—pun intended – but it will also allow me to control it, instead of having these traumas control me or overwhelm me. It’s manageable I can manage it on the page.’ So, I wrote the prose first…the headings were in alphabetical order, and there wasn’t really a story or a narrative. It was kind of jumping from place to place so I wondered what would happen if I actually placed them chronologically. And all of a sudden, the story came through. But then, I realized some of these [pieces] are very, very heavy; there’s got to be breathing room from one prose piece to another. I wondered if I can insert between them once in a while something to give space to allow the reader to breathe. And that’s where the poems came through. You see a different font, italicized, they have a different lineation and they’re more lyrical. These are resting places. Whether or not the reader wants to read them, at least their eyes can rest on the page. That’s how I formed the particular structure. It allowed me to give a little more heft to the book, and it allowed the narrative pieces to breathe and it allowed me to not feel overwhelmed if I ever read this out loud. The poems are there for me to breathe as well.
TFR: In this book, you reflect upon your experiences with your sexuality, with childhood poverty, mental illness, immigration, your nationality—even your experience as an artist. In another interview, you mentioned that you grew up as an activist. How have the current administration and today’s sociopolitical climate influenced or affected you personally, as well as your writing?
RG: Well, I’ve always been a very political writer myself. I’ve always thought of myself as very politicized. I come from generations of union workers and migrant farm workers. So, it’s not new. What is maybe a little stronger, a little more amplified, is that I feel a greater sense of purpose to get these stories into the world in order to resist the narratives being told by the media, even by our own president. Those cannot dominate the community’s or the public’s understanding of who Mexicans are, who gay people are, who immigrants are. The more of us that are pushing back by showing our humanity, by showing individual stories, the less likely it is for people to believe that there’s only one kind of immigrant, one kind Mexican or one kind of queer person. So that’s really a bigger sense of purpose: getting my voice out there, joined by other voices so that together we show the scope of our experiences.
TFR: Why did you choose to write in English?
RG: English is the language of my education, Spanish is the language of home. Spanish is the language of my heart, but my literary education comes from reading English. I’ve tried to write in Spanish and I have written books in Spanish, but those are books for young people, children’s books. Those I can do because my vocabulary is very limited. My imagination has a more sophisticated vocabulary, so I’m not able to really access that complicated vocabulary in Spanish; it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t come to me. My Spanish is very oral, not really written.
TFR: Your many travels are catalogued in this work, and with that, a search for home. Has this changed since you published this book; do you consider New York City home?
RG: New York City is where I live now, but it’s not my home. I learned to come to terms with the fact that home is memory. That’s where it is. Wherever I go, I will always carry my home with me. Like a turtle, my home is on my back. It’s in my memory, it’s in my imagination. I lost the home of my childhood; I moved around so much that I know that I’ve inhabited different houses, different spaces, but home I’ve brought with me everywhere. So currently, home is wherever I am. Home is wherever I’m sitting at the moment, remembering, thinking back and building new memories. This home is expanding wherever I go. But, I miss Mexico. I miss the Southwest—because of the desert, the sky, the sun, the light—that is a different kind of pleasure for me, so I go back as often as I can. But New York City? I feel a little bit like I’m in exile here, but not in a very negative way. Sometimes you have to be away from home to be able to look back. So, even though the landscape of the Southwest and Mexico continues to inhabit my work, I’m comfortable with living here. I don’t feel like I don’t belong here because I carry everything with me.
TFR: Are there other poets who inspire you?
RG: There are so many. Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet. Not only was he a gay man, but he was also a poet who liked to navigate the darknesses of life and people and find the light. Another important American poet is Elizabeth Bishop; I love her language, her curiosity, her patience in writing. I don’t have that skill yet, but I’m learning it from her: to be patient in terms of writing some of these longer poems. I love anything from this whole new generation of poets—they inspire me. Daniel Smith is very fearless in his poetics. He’s fearless in writing about his sexuality, race, class. I’m very inspired by these poets.
