Brenda Cárdenas’ poetry works itself into the folds of overlapping worlds: Spanish and English intermingle with ideas of childhood and adulthood, song and poem, and day and night. Her topics, in the midst of transition, maintain individuality within the patterns of a collective. Words push and pull in a delicate dance; their hard, stand-alone meanings (fear, zigzag, zero) are tempered with lilting, soothing rhythms, like a provocative duende mixed with mother’s lullaby.

In Boomerang, her recently released collection from Bilingual Press, Cárdenas uses this form to obscure the constancies that define our every-day world.

Empty Spaces

She is a switchblade afraid of the hint in a two-second glint that
might spring you an arms length away. I fear. She kisses close, to
shut the open gate of hunger, heavy-footed as history perched on
her chest. Empty spaces. She never rests. Stumbling through the
clutter of language, she rummages cramped closets for her lost
sounds—i greigas y erres—tumbling like marbles spilled in the
attic. Spaces I fear. She mainlines white noise—a guest persistent
as rain flooding her muted room. Spaces. She adds another hue to
the walls crawling with orange and blue that zigzag the curves of
her world to the ceiling. I fear empty spaces. She is reeling in a
ravenous subjunctive that would doubt its own bones were it not
for her grip slipping from your moist shoulders to the winter of
metal bedposts. Spaces I empty. She grinds against you, minding
only the bland blue sky that filters through the O’Keefe hollow of
her pelvis. I empty fear. In this abyss, she comes, braying the
silence away.

Like this poem? Read another Cárdenas original: Calculations

“Empty Spaces” and “Calculations” from Boomerang by Brenda Cárdenas, copyright (c) 2009 by Bilingual Press. Used by permission from Bilingual Review Press, Tempe, Arizona.

Read Sampsonia Way’s interview with Brenda here.

Read Brenda’s bio here.

CLICK HERE to buy a copy of Boomerang.

Photo: © Nancy Crampton

Yusef Komunyakaa captivates his audience with his distinct reading style. It’s not showy; he reads quietly, yet his sonorous voice fills the room with a distinct cadence. He may read some lines quickly, so that they seem to run together and are punctuated by the consonants’ staccato. Other times, he reads slowly so that each line seems to hang in the air, as the listener is suspended in the silence at the end of the line, waiting for the next image the poet will conjure.

He creates this rich and complex rhythm with deceptively simple language: “On Fridays he’d open up a can of Jax / after coming home from the mill,” “You’re at the edge of azaleas,” and “These yellow flowers / Go on forever / Almost to Detroit / Almost to the sea.” With remarkable concision, he summons entire landscapes for readers to explore: Landscapes of the rural South, the jungles of Vietnam, and even ancient Persia. They are landscapes of hidden violence and buried history, but they are also places of unexpected acts of compassion.

In the Voice Literary Supplement, Robyn Selman writes: “[His] poems rise to a crescendo, like that moment in songs one or two beats before the bridge, when everything is hooked-up, full-blown.” The metaphor is apt; Komunyakaa’s poetry is suffused with the rhythms of jazz, which the poet has often cited as a source of inspiration and influence. He told the Georgia Review in 1992, “I feel blessed that something pulled jazz and poetry together inside me.”

The rhythm of his poetry is also inflected with the idiom of his native Louisiana. He was born in Bogalusa in 1947, the first of five children born to James Willie Sr., a carpenter, and Mildred Brown. He was named after his father, but later took the name Komunyakaa as a tribute to his grandfather, a stowaway from the West Indies.

In his 2002 essay “Dark Waters,” Komunyakaa writes that he has a “love-hate complex” for his hometown. By the time he was born, the land—particularly in the poor black sections of town—was saturated with pollution from the lumber mills. It was also a place of stark segregation and racial violence. In “Dark Waters,” he describes how the disparity between the white marble monuments dedicated to southern generals and the makeshift graves of African-Americans near the festering town dump “was analogous to the town’s psyche.”

Writing for the Washington Post in 2009, he said of his childhood, “It was impossible not to have known and lived within the social and political dimensions of skin color.”

However, for him Bogalusa was also a place of stunning natural beauty where “yellow flowers/go on forever” and “slate-blue catfish” swimming under a pond’s surface cause swamp orchids to “quiver under green hats.” He grew up surrounded by the rich musical and storytelling tradition of the Deep South.

Komunyakaa’s father was illiterate, but the poet claims the precision and patience with which his father would measure and cut a wood board influenced his own writing process. It was his mother—who once brought home a set of encyclopedias—who encouraged her son to read. Because blacks were not allowed to check out books from or even read inside the public library, Komunyakaa would explore a small library maintained by a black church. There he discovered writers such as James Baldwin and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

After graduating from high school in 1965, he enlisted in the Army and served in Vietnam as an information specialist. In addition to covering major combat operations, he wrote a column for the Army newspaper on Vietnamese literature and culture. He took two books of poetry to Vietnam, Hayden Carruth’s anthology The Voice is Great Within Us and Donald Allen’s Contemporary American Poetry, but didn’t start writing in earnest until 1973, three years after he returned. He studied English, sociology, and creative writing at the University of Colorado, where he earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts.

In 1984, while living in New Orleans and teaching in the public schools there, he published his full-length book, Copacetic. The poems examine the blues, jazz, and the folk history of his hometown.

That same year, Komunyakaa began renovating his 100-plus-year-old house. As he worked on the 12-foot ceilings, memories of Vietnam began returning to him. He started keeping a notebook in the next room and would jot down images after he descended. “Each line had to be worth its weight in sweat,” he said.

The resulting book, Dien Cai Dau, was published in 1988 and is considered to be some of the best writing about Vietnam. With distilled and precise language, Komunyakaa creates highly specific and emotionally resonant images. In “You and I are Disappearing” he writes:

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At day break
she burns like a piece of paper….

We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.

Behind each line the reader can detect the metronome of the ladder’s steps. In addition to sharing a common rhythm, these poems are marked by a deep compassion for the Vietnamese and punctuated by moments of unsettling intimacy. In “We Never Know,” he describes a Vietnamese soldier caught in the crossfire of American guns: “He danced with tall grass / for a moment, like he was swaying / with a woman.” Later the speaker goes to the body and finds the man clutching a photograph. He writes, “There is no other way / to say this: I fell in love.” In the final lines, he turns the corpse over “so he wouldn’t be / kissing the ground.”

Another such moment is present in “Tu Do Street.” The speaker describes Saigon’s segregated bars, but in the brothels, “black & white / soldiers touch the same lovers / minutes apart, tasting / each other’s breath.”

Throughout his career Komunyakaa consistently returns to the idea that the stories of blacks and whites are tangled, even as they remain alien to each other, separated across a divide of silence and denial.

Returning to the Magic City

He confronts the unspoken legacy of racial violence in his childhood home in Magic City. In this 1992 collection, Bogalusa is a place where a shameful history lurks beneath the surface, like the catfish that glide beneath the surface of the millpond, shaking the stalks of orchids. In one poem, the speaker’s mother points out a rope leftover from a lynching hanging in a tree on the courthouse square.

Magic City also explores the secrets, stories, and brutality in his own family. In “Venus’s-flytraps,” a 5-year-old crouches below the porch and hears his mother say that “I was a mistake. / That I made her a bad girl.” He also writes about his grandfather from Trinidad “smuggled in like a sack of papaya / On a banana boat” wearing one girl’s shoe and one boy’s. In that poem, he explains the significance of taking on his grandfather’s name: “I picked up those mismatched shoes / & slipped into his skin. Komunyakaa. / His blues, African fruit on my tongue.”

“My Father’s Love Letters” is a complex portrait of an illiterate father, asking his son to write letters to his wife “promising to never beat her / Again.” While the father stands “laboring over a simple word,” he can “look at blueprints / & say how many bricks / Formed each wall.” While the speaker doesn’t excuse the father for his violence, there is affection for “this man, / Who stole roses & hyacinth / For his yard.” In the final line the father is “almost / Redeemed by what he tried to say.”

Like the father laboring to redeem himself through language, Komunyakaa’s poetry is an attempt to redeem America from the violence of history. In 2004, he told The New York Times, “I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, re-imagined, so we can move through them.”

“The Ear is a Great Editor.”

Magic City and Dien Cau Dau cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry, a reputation which only grew after he won the Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular: New And Selected Poems 1977-1989, published in 1993. Komunyakaa’s reaction was characteristically humble. The day he found out about the award, he taught his afternoon class at Princeton University as usual and his family’s reaction became the subject of a humorous article by his then-wife, the Australian writer Mandy Sayer. (The couple were married for 10 years and have a daughter together.)

The publicity made him uneasy. “I’m uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem,” he told The New York Times. “I think of my poems as personal and public at the same time.” However, at the core of Neon Vernacular is a deeply personal poem, “Songs for My Father.” It is a sweeping elegy full of rage and tenderness toward his father. In the poem, Komunyakaa tells a story based on real events. The speaker’s father derides his son’s profession, and then, seemingly out of the blue, asks for a birthday poem. Komunyakaa said his father’s request was his hardest assignment, one he could only complete after his father died in 1986.

In his following book, Thieves of Paradise, he retreats from familial stories, but still covers a wide emotional range with poems on Vietnam, Native American history, and Greek tragedy. The book also contains a long tribute to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker,which musician Sandy Evan scored for the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Komunyakaa has collaborated with musicians and dramatists on numerous other projects: He contributed a libretto to Slip Knot, an opera by T. J. Anderson; recorded an album called Love Notes from the Madhouse with Dennis Gonzalez, and recently translated and adapted for stage the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh with Chad Gracia.

Despite his many collaborations, he remains productive as a poet; Since winning the Pulitzer he has published five additional volumes. His productivity can be attributed to the fact that he writes every day in a notebook kept near his bed. Then he painstakingly revises, condensing 100-plus lines down to 40 or 50. He told poet Toi Derricotte in 1997 that he wants “a kind of compression. Think about those artificial flowers that, dropped in water, expand.” He edits by reading the poem over and over again out loud because the ear is “a great editor.”

Perhaps Komunyakaa is so careful with his craft because he sees poetry as performing sacred work. In his introduction to 2003 Best American Poetry, he writes that poetry “reconnects us to the act of dreaming ourselves into existence.” In that essay, he takes on “exploratory poets,” or the new avant-garde who rely on obfustication rather than craft and shy away from political or social themes. In an interview that appeared in Willow Springs, he said, “That’s a kind of selling out—to remain in that landscape of the abstract—when there’s so much happening to us and around us.”

Beyond just urging his contemporaries to engage in social issues in their poetry, Komunyakaa has worked to raise awareness for the AIDS crisis in Ghana and participated in readings at the United Nations. In 2003, he joined a group of poets threatening to protest a poetry forum hosted by Laura Bush, who subsequently canceled the event.

“Poetry Has Hardly Anything to do with Therapy”

The year 2003 was a full one for Komunyakaa, packed with poets protesting the war in Iraq, a production of Slip Knot, and preparation for publishing his 13th book of poetry, Taboo, the Wishbone Trilogy. But it was also a year of great personal tragedy. In July, Komunyakaa’s partner, the poet Reetika Vazirani, killed herself and their 2-year-old son Jehan. Again Komunyakaa was the subject of reporters’ scrutiny, but he retreated from view, refusing to comment on the incident.

Reviewers have searched for clues to his reaction in his subsequent books, but have come up empty. “Writing poetry has hardly anything to do with therapy,” he wrote in a 2004 letter to Poetry.

In Taboo, autobiographical material falls away almost entirely in favor of densely allusive verse that traverses the range of Western history. In the first poem of the collection, Komunyakaa announces, “These stories become flesh as these ghosts / argue about what’s lost.” And in the poems that follow lost histories indeed come alive in the stories of Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire’s mulatto mistress who ends up leaning “halfway / to a pauper’s grave”; Jefferson’s slaves who “face / each other like Philomela / & Prone”; and the Crows of the Arabs, Arabian poets from 500 B.C. who were the children of unnamed Egyptian concubines.

While he writes about people long-dead, Komunyakaa still creates a powerful intimacy between the reader and subject. “Nude Study,” a poem about John Singer Sargent’s painting of a black elevator operator, combines precise images with a narrative intensity:

Belief is almost
flesh. Wings beat,
dust trying to breathe, as if the figure
might rise from the oils
& flee the dead
artist studio. For years
this piece of work was there
like a golden struggle….
So much taken
for granted & denied, only
grace & mutability
can complete this face.

“The gift of the poet is to see behind things,” he told his friend Rudolph Lewis in 1985. This ability to see behind is what enables Komunyakaa to make the figure in the Sargent painting come alive. He added that the poet’s craft can “help us deal with the horror of our existence.” But that protective layer is torn away in his most recent book, Warhorses, in which he confronts the horror of war head-on.

In Warhorses, which was published after Komunyakaa left Princeton to teach at New York University, the figure of Gilgamesh appears with the “old masters of Shock & Awe.” There are moments in the collection where the poet reveals a frustration, exhaustion, and even resignation in the face of millennium after millennium of war. He writes in “Surge,” “Always more body bags & body counts for oath takers/ & sharpshooters. Always more.”

He also returns to the theme of atonement and forgiveness in the long poem “Autobiography of My Alter-Ego,” which includes passages about Iraq and Vietnam. The final section of the poem is a litany asking for forgiveness for various creatures and people, including “the tiger/ dumbstruck beneath its own rainbow” and “my father’s larcenous tongue.” It concludes, “Forgive my heart & penis,/ but don’t forgive my hands.”

Komunyakaa’s willingness to acknowledge his own responsibility, rather than engage in mere finger pointing, is what makes him such a convincing political voice, a voice that urges compassion rather than castigation. Despite being witness to racism, war, and violence for more than six decades, Komunyakaa reserves a stubborn hope for America. Writing for the Washington Post on the eve of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, he said, “When the ghosts of the past enter my dreams in their black and white garb, they remind me that America still holds her hopeful trump card, betting on change.”

Read Elizabeth’s bio.

Translation: Román Antopolsky

Photo: © Than Htay

Román Antopolsky nació en Buenos Aires. Ha publicado tres libros de poesía: Ádelon (Tsé-Tsé, Argentina), Cythna en Red (Intemperie, Chile), y Amor Islam (Lumme, Brasil).  Reconocido por sus traducciones del ruso, alemán e inglés al español, esta vez incursiona en la traducción del birmano. Tras tardes enteras de conversar con Khet Mar –escritora residente de Ciudad de Asilo, Pittsburgh– Antopolsky logra verter palabras, interpretar sonidos y conservar intacta la voz de una escritora que nunca antes había sido traducida al idioma de Neruda.

Khet Mar nació en Birmania en 1969. Es autora de la novela Salvaje Noche Nevada y de varias colecciones de cuentos, ensayos y poemas. Su obra ha sido traducida al inglés, al japonés y ahora al español.

Khet Mar es una escritora en exilio. Lo que significa, dice Antopolsky, “que ella viaja, y en última instancia vive, con un des-lugar portable”. Vida en el pabellón de la muerte nos habla sobre su exilio en su propio país, y Primavera para mí sobre Pittsburgh, sobre el lugar donde toma asilo desde hace dos años. Los tres poemas no nos traen sino el testimonio del asilo.

Vida en el pabellón de la muerte

Donde la tortura mental es el castigo por una infracción menor al reglamento penitenciario

La celda que me habían asignado tenía alrededor de cuatro metros cuadrados y medio, con una hilera de barras de metal formando una pared, iluminada por una bombita de 40 watts. En una de las esquinas había una estera de bambú y allí estaba sentada mi compañera de celda, una mujer joven. Me acerqué y senté en una de las esquinas de la estera para preguntarle luego: “¿quién eres? ¿de cuál centro de interrogatorios vienes? ¿cómo fue tu interrogatorio?” Conversamos, describimos mutuamente nuestras experiencias. Le conté de los golpes y patadas y ella me mostró cómo le habían dañado los dedos con piezas filosas de bambú.

Alrededor de las ocho de la noche, al quedar la prisión en silencio, oí golpes en la pared del fondo de la celda. A los que mi compañera dio otros en respuesta. Éste era aparentemente un método de comunicación entre prisioneros. Podíamos también hablar a través de las barras directamente con otras tres mujeres jóvenes en la celda de enfrente. Hablamos hasta entrada la noche, y a las dos de la mañana por fin nos fuimos a dormir. Aunque lo encontraba difícil, dormir en este entorno y con la luz siempre prendida.

La prisión despertaba temprano y había actividades fuera de la celda. Un plato de avena viscosa era servido a las siete.

Alrededor de las diez oí unos gritos rítmicos de algo que sonaba como “toma” y “echa” acompañados del ruido de agua salpicada. Venía de un patio ubicado más allá de las celdas y para averiguar qué era todo eso abrí una ventana en lo alto de una de las paredes y me asomé a ver. Unas veinte mujeres se salpicaban con agua de un tanque de ladrillos, supervisadas por una vigilante equipada con una porra al grito de “toma” y “echa”. Ante la orden “toma” las mujeres recogían el agua del tanque que luego se salpicaban para asearse a la orden de “echa”.

Mientras veía esta extraña escena oigo una voz fuerte atrás de mí. “¿Quién abrió la ventana?”, preguntó una vigilante.

Había abierto la ventana tras desatar un alambre de metal que aseguraba las dos manijas y luego descorrer el pestillo. “Yo la abrí”, confesé.

“¿Quién te ha dado la orden de que hicieras eso?” la vigilante vociferó.

No era más que una ventana, protesté. ¿Dónde estaba el daño en abrirla? Pero abrir una ventana parecía ser un crimen capital, dado que luego de regañarme nuevamente la vigilante como castigo decidió transferirme al “pabellón de la muerte” de la prisión.

Recogí mi montoncito de ropa, le di la despedida a mi compañera de celda y a las tres reclusas de la celda vecina y seguí a la vigilante a mi nuevo cuarto de ominoso nombre.

El pabellón de la muerte, edificio construido de ladrillos, estaba dividido por un único corredor con cinco celdas pequeñas y dos más grandes a sus costados. Como su escalofriante nombre lo insinúa, alojaba prisioneros sentenciados a muerte. Y ahora yo era una de ellos.

Me fue asignada una de las celdas más grandes, de seis metros por cuatro. La compartían unas diez mujeres que me dieron una ruidosa bienvenida y llenaron de preguntas. A la semana todas salvo dos habían sido llevadas.

La celda donde pasaría varios meses tenía desperdicios apilados en un rincón y una olla con agua para beber en otro. Entre todas compartíamos tres platos y dos esteras, logrando sobrevivir a base de una dieta de arvejas hervidas, espinaca, sopa agria, una pasta de camarones fritos y tamarindos. Cuando se nos permitía salir de la celda y cruzar el patio para tomar una ducha tratábamos de juntar cuantos vegetales y verduras pudiéramos encontrar y así agregar alguna variedad a las comidas, todo usando un cuchillo hecho con una horquilla para poder cortar las escasas sustancias.

A veces las mujeres que recibían paquetes de comida en visitas de miembros familiares compartían sus regalos, curry casero, pasta de pescado y verduras fritas. Me di cuenta, sin embargo, que estos paquetes no resultaban tan grandes ni sabrosos si venían de parte de los maridos de las mujeres en prisión.

Una de las reclusas me dijo: “Cuando los hombre son los que están en prisión sus mujeres tratan a toda costa de visitarlos, a pesar de las muchas dificultades. Pero cuando es el caso de las mujeres, sus maridos sólo lo hacen para ser obedientes. Ofrecen excusas tales como el cuidado de los chicos, las tareas domésticas o los percances diarios. Algunos maridos incluso se van con otra.”

Teníamos cierta libertad en el pabellón de la muerte: libertad de hablar y discutir entre nosotras. Y de rezar. No sabía aún cuánto tiempo más debía cumplir en prisión. ¿Y por qué el pabellón de la muerte? No parecía que fuera un buen augurio.

Había, sin embargo, peores lugares. Había una celda de castigo por completo oscura, sin ventanas y con arena húmeda por piso. Cuatro o cinco días en este liendo, fétido agujero era el castigo por violar el reglamento penitenciario.

Por la noche nos levantábamos los ánimos cantando. Algunas de las reclusas conocían las canciones populares de artistas como Zaw Win Hut o Hay Mar Ne Win y además tenían buenas voces. Yo no canto, así que me dedicaba a relatarles algún libro que había leído.

Luego de cuatro meses, justo al tiempo que me acostumbraba a las rutinas del pabellón, un día me llaman por mi nombre y llevan a un jeep aparcado a la entrada de la prisión. El jeep me llevó a otro edificio de la prisión donde dos oficiales de inteligencia, dos soldados y una vigilante me acompañaron adentro. Estaba lleno de estudiantes, todos aguardando comparecer ante la corte marcial penitenciaria.

No logro recordar los detalles de los cargos en mi contra, sólo la sentencia. Diez años. Al menos ahora la incertidumbre había terminado. Al tiempo que el sol se ponía en un día caluroso de verano era llevada a comenzar mi período en prisión, no en el pabellón de la muerte sino en una sala de custodia especial para reclusas mujeres.

Read the English version.

Primavera para mí

Luna y estrellas sobre Pittsburgh en toda su gloria, aún más enaltecidas por flores en Sampsonia Way. ¿Es que nos das la bienvenida a Pittsburgh? Sí, era que Pittsburgh nos recibía con las señales de la primavera que comenzaba.

Aunque aún con ansias, en Pittsburgh, no veo el momento de un respiro al miedo y la persecuciόn. Para sumar gloria a la gloria planté flores en mi jardín. E incapaz de olvidar a aquellos que aún padecen y están en peligro hice una ofrenda de flores y oré.

La noche que estas flores se abrieron en flor (nunca olvidaré el intenso, abrasante rojo de la salvia) tuve un sueño extraño, enteramente en blanco. Ante el brillo de la luz en Pittsburgh nada me impedía sentir el mundo sin filtros, sin censura. Experimenté en Pittsburgh la libertad y este estado se esparciό hasta en mis sueños.

En mi sueño los árboles, los bosques, los autos, los edificios, todos los seres vivos, incluso los cielos y mares, incluso yo misma desaparecieron en el resplandor de una cálida luz blanca. El abandono de sí mismo era fascinante, y nos llevaba aún más lejos.

En el sueño todos flotaban, sin resistirse, hacia un lugar desconocido. Estaba desorientada y molesta, y al mismo tiempo veía todo con curiosidad y esperanza. No quería resistir y sin embargo estaba triste.

Llevada en la deriva oí gemir y llorar sin advertir de quién todo ello venía, y en lenguas que no lograba entender. Me di cuenta de la brillante luz blanca. Tenía que tener alguna fuente, pero era imposible distinguir nada o nadie aquí. Flotaba en una luminosa mismidad. Esforzando mi vista pude sentir gente toda alrededor mío, pero sin poder ver. Todo era uno y lo mismo, las diferencias desaparecidas en la brillante luz blanca.

Aun despiertos, nunca podríamos saber cuándo algo terminará. En mi sueño nunca dejé de flotar. Permanecí fundida, interminablemente, sin jamás alcanzar la fuente.

Lo primero que oí al despertar fue el parloteo de los pájaros. Al abrir la ventana una brisa me recibiό con una tenue fragancia. Bajo el calor del sol, en este santuario de Pittsburgh donde tomo refugio, la vida toma lugar donde las flores se abren en flor.

Read the Burmese version.

Photo: © Than Htay

Entretejida en la lid

Hace tiempo se había desavenido–

aunque el entrelazo solo y

yo en mi espacio.

Al buscar darle claridad y

tomar distancia de un manojo de nudos

en mi mente, en mi corazón,

oyendo, viendo,

percibiendo, imaginando

a cuántas cosas quedé adherida y apresé

enlazándome con lo perplejo.

II

¿Debo proseguir?

¿Volver al espacio primero?

Aunque

Guardo la expectativa algo resuelva mi trama

Siento la delicia de guardar la expectativa

Y pienso en el sentido de tal delicia.

No me avengo a ese sentido, me confundo.

El lazo no se suelta

y no logro regresar.

Sin amanecer ni luz de luna

a mitad de camino no veo ni estrellas.

Me detuve y me volví a ver:

estoy perdiendo el canto que cantaba antes.

Read the Burmese version.

Melancolía que asedia

¿De qué modo decirlo?

Quieto y lacerado este cuerpo avatar

aunque aún permanece y se abate.

En un parpadeo

mi alma en viaje vuela todas las millas–

tantos planetas.

Colecciono las esperanzas dispersas.

Las apiño en un ansiar hueco, desfondado.

Sólo al regreso al refugio frágil

Me doy cuenta he traído abundante nada.

Alguno –y no sé cuál,

Cuál, no sé –el deseo–

He de seguir – seré feliz

donde sea que esté; lo que fuere que vea

veré con imaginación hambrienta

un vivir que sea mío,

algo que quiera por demás,

un mandato innegable.

Por la noche . . .

en la habitación doy un suspiro

al caer la nieve,

ella se le acerca secretamente

creando algunos minutos de esplendor.

Cómo proseguir el resto de mi vida ellos

profunda y silenciosamente

habrán de hablar.

Read the Burmese version.

Photo: © Than Htay

Nostalgia tal

¿Entenderías si

dijese cuánta

nostalgia me ata?

Las manecillas en la juventud:

partir ensangrentada:

día y noche:

gemir en el dolor:

luna en su luz siempre lejos:

un sueño blanco:

lágrimas encarnadas:

todo

con tal anhelo no habría

si no anhelase yo tanto.

Mi pena es nostalgia

mi fuerza es nostalgia

mi ser es nostalgia

intempestivamente

atribulada siempre

irremediablemente intolerable

en el pecho pus

mi mente maldita.

De esta nostalgia imperecedera sola

yo me enorgullezco

como la que siente

como la que carga yo

existo en mi vida.

Read the Burmese version.

Graphic: © ICORN.org

This year, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN, celebrates 50 years of defending freedom of expression around the world with a year-long campaign – Because Writers Speak their Minds. As part of this campaign, the Committee looks back on 50 emblematic cases illustrating how and why they have worked. One case on this list is story of Mansur Rajih. This poet was the first International Cities of Refugee Network’s guest writer in Stavanger, Norway, where he arrived in 1998 after spending 15 years in prison in Yemen. Sampsonia Way is happy to reproduce this interview and some of his poems.

The Wound

“The sun also shines from here”,
his finger pointing to his heart
his eyes rimmed with tears

Mansur Rajih is an Arab Yemeni poet. A revolutionary writer and political activist, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a faked crime he did not commit. In 1998 he was released from prison after a long international campaign in which the Norwegian government participated along with Amnesty International and International PEN who paid great efforts to release him.

He came to Stavanger City of Refuge, where he since then has published several poetic writings such as “Horoscope of Prison? Horoscope of Love.” in 2000. Most of his poetry is an anthology of love. Now, he writes from exile about the life in a western country, strange to his country and different in many ways. He says: “Poetry is a struggle for freedom, therefore it is a lifelong program”.

And Yet They Sing

The world is more beautiful than we can imagine
The world is a river
and the atmosphere is a bird’s song
and green trees
The tiny movement of the leaves
is a fine song
Dreams without borders
love
morning
the progression of seasons

How did you start in a strange country which is different from Yemen in so many ways?

“There is an age when every human being discovers and experiences life in its different levels, forms, life contradictions, difficulties and also happy times. Sadly, I was in prison at that age, from the time I was 24 years old until I was 40. Since the first moment in Stavanger I felt I had to start over again from a point even below zero. My body weight was 36 kilos. I don’t have any qualifications except my history and my dreams. I didn’t know the language to communicate with the Norwegian society, which is totally different from the Yemeni society. It was very difficult in the beginning, I felt like I was in a big beautiful prison of silent life because I couldn’t communicate with the people. I was in an endless circle of silence.”

Eiganes*

Here, in this quiet, the trees are proud of themselves
Longing eats at the heart
There is no life in exile
Here, the sound has no echo
The poem flees from between your hands,
flees to the heat of Yemen
Love is blocked by questions
what does get through is strangled by frost
A new morning over you, the silent city
Pain wars pain within the heart
This stretch of time eats at the mind
The wind brings nothing to the banished man,
and leaving, it carries nothing hence.
(* A residential area in Stavanger)

How have you been affected by Norway and the society in Stavanger?

“Life has a large and direct influence on us; Stavanger is a relatively small city, which was very different to what I was used to. It is a new place and a new time. Norway lives in welfare and freedom, whereas Yemen lives in a state of poverty and persecution. Stavanger has affected me in the way that I became more calm, and more contemplating about life itself, rather than being affected by the events themselves. Also, in Yemen I was more politically active, more influenced by the history, stressed by the present and worried about the future. But the calm I have found in Stavanger gave my writing more artistic value, it is more focused on nature, more attached to the life and destiny.”

Another Sky

An asphalt sky: your memory
Your earth is only a body
Time is a poem approaching
Time is a poem withering
Time is a poem dying
& time is a wailing wall
for poems and dreams
Such is exile
Your bottlenecked bottleneck
The wounded Fatherland’s open sores
moaning within you
An asphalt sky: your memory
Your earth is only a body.

Read the rest of the interview here.

This article is an excerpt from Lucy Popescu‘s Silenced Voices. An extended version of this article was originally published in the Literary Review.

Human rights groups around the world have welcomed the news that the Cuban government has agreed to release a number of political prisoners. The amnesty includes 22 writers, journalists and librarians arrested and sentenced during the ‘Black Spring’ crackdown in March 2003. A number of them have already been released and have arrived in Madrid, Spain.

However, Human Rights Watch is quick to point out that Raul Castro has incarcerated scores of political prisoners since taking over from his brother Fidel.

These include Albert Santiago du Bouchet, a director and reporter for the independent news agency Habana Press, who was detained on 18 April 2009 while he was visiting relatives in Artemisa, near Havana. A month later, on 12 May, he was sentenced during a summary trial to three years in prison on charges of ‘disrespect for authority’. The circumstances behind his arrest remain unclear but it is widely believed that the real reason for his detention is in reprisal for his writing, which includes reporting on social issues.

Du Bouchet was previously imprisoned in August 2005 on similar ‘disrespect’ charges and had reportedly been threatened with prison on several occasions before his most recent detention.

In a Kafkaesque twist, a provision of the Criminal Code allows individuals to be imprisoned without ever having committed a crime; merely on the allegation that they are ‘dangerous’ and might commit one in the future.

Raymundo Perdigón Brito, founder of the independent news agency Yayabo Press, was arrested on 29 November 2006. After defying a State Security order to cease his journalistic activities, he was accused of being a ‘pre-criminal danger to society’ and on 5 December 2006 was sentenced to 4 years in prison charged with ‘social dangerousness’.

Ramón Velásquez Toranso, a journalist for the independent news agency Libertad, was arrested on 23 January 2007 together with his wife and daughter, both of whom were freed later that day. He received the same charges and was sentenced to 3 years supervised parole before being transferred to a forced-labour camp in Las Tunas province.

Readers may like to send appeals welcoming the amnesty for 52 political prisoners but expressing serious concern that journalists Albert Santiago du Bouchet, Raymundo Perdigón Brito and Ramón Velásquez Toranso remain in prison in Cuba, in violation of their right to freedom of expression, and calling for their release.

General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +53 7 8333085 (via Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
(Fax: 00 1 212 779 1697 / Email: cuba@un.int via Cuban Mission to UN)

Please send also appeals to diplomatic representatives of Cuba in your country

Since 2005, the International Cities of Refugee Network has been aiding writers in danger by providing them with safe places to live and material support. ICORN is an association of cities around the world who share a common mission: to preserve freedom of expression and to respond to politically motivated threats and persecution writers face in their home countries.

Sampsonia Way is pleased to present a series of interviews with writers from all over the world who have participated in ICORN. By way of introduction we present this interview with ICORN Executive Director, Helge Lunde. Here he tells the story of ICORN’s founding, how it has provided support for persecuted writers, and what inspires him to do this work.

What inspired the formation of ICORN and how did the organization come about?

The idea to create a network of cities to shelter writers in danger came out of the International Parliament of Writers (IPW). IPW was established in 1993 at the initiative of Salmon Rushdie. It was, in part, in response to a series of assassinations of Algerian writers. Starting in 1995, they began recruiting cities to join their International Network of Cities of Asylum (INCA). I think Barcelona was the first INCA member city, while my city, Stavanger, Norway, joined in 1996. Soon lots of other cities followed, and the network also spread to the United States.

Around 2000, IPW and INCA were struggling with considerable administrative challenges. In 2004 the IPW ceased to exist, and in 2005 INCA was formally disbanded.

The remaining question for all the cities and organizations involved was of course: Does the collapse of INCA mean that any organized work of this kind is in vain, or shall we join forces, learn from the failures and successes of the past, and start anew? Luckily the latter alternative was chosen, and I think we can already claim that it was the right choice to make.

The ICORN Administration center was established in Stavanger in December 2005.

What made you want to become involved in ICORN? Were you surprised by anything you learned or encountered?

I personally started to work with Stavanger City of Refuge in 1998, and soon learned that there was a big need for safe havens for persecuted writers.  Subsequently, I learned that there was a lot to gain for the cities and organizations willing to join the movement and become cities of refuge/asylum. . On a municipal level, simply having the status  reminds the city and its inhabitants of important values. The writers’ contribution to the city is, of course, a vital part as well.

I was inspired to engage fully in this work and help make ICORN happened just because I got to know Stavanger’s guest writer, Mansur Rajih from Yemen. Like many of the other writers, he struggled with the brutal process of being separated from what he has regarded as his home. But I learned a lot from him.

During the first years of ICORN, I learned that you have to do at least two things at the same time. Of course, the first thing is to bring as many threatened voices into safe havens as fast as possible. But at the same time, you have to make sure foundations are laid for long-term development of the writers hosted. In 1998, Rajih became a writer in refuge, and now, in 2010, his work is really blossoming.

It is a great dilemma knowing that the writer shall have a life also after the two-year stay in a city of refuge. Should you encourage the writer to just lay back, relax, and enjoy the new (and very well-deserved) free life, or should you from day one remind him or her about preparing for all the challenges that will follow after? No easy answers here, but this is what a network like ICORN is for: Sharing thoughts, ideas, experiences between writers, coordinators, and the engaged communities.

What are some of the challenges you face in working with these writers and helping them leave their home countries?

We face lots of challenges, borders, and boundaries when trying to get writers out of danger zones and into an ICORN safe haven. Sometimes oppressive regimes gladly let their critics go, but many times writers have to take great risks to escape.

As you can imagine, one of our most pressing challenges is to make sure the ICORN cities are ready so they can accommodate the extreme emergency needs of writers, but then also create long-term sustainable solutions for those writers.

As you said one of the aspects of ICORN’s mission is to promote the work of ICORN writers. What are some of the ways your organization is doing that?

Some of our guest writers continue to face threats after reaching their host city and hence choose (with good reasons!) to keep out of the public sphere, at least for a while. However, most of the ICORN writers are interested in using their new safe havens to communicate what is on their hearts and minds. In 2007, six ICORN cities (Barcelona, Brussels, Frankfurt, Norwich, Stavanger, and Stockholm) joined together to create Shahrazad Stories for Life, a website and project to promote the voices of all ICORN writers. It will run until the end of 2012 and has received support from the European Union.

What stuns me the most as I follow ICORN’s development is the willingness among our 31 member cities to share ideas, experiences, and resources. And allow me to say, we have for a long time been impressed by the promotional work City of Asylum/ Pittsburgh has been doing, and look forward to lots of cooperation in the future.

ICORN is dedicated to the protection of freedoms of expression. Do you place any limits on or have any caveats to that?

ICORN works very closely with International PEN. Our charter and guidelines are very similar to those of PEN and other freedom of expression organizations like International Freedom of Expression eXchange, Index on Censorship, and Article 19.

Although we respect every human being’s right to express themselves freely, a writer primarily exercising hate speech, such as Holocaust deniers, will not be a favorite candidate to present to an ICORN member city for placement.

There are thousands of writers in danger all over the world. How do you choose which to support? How do you deal with making those hard choices?

This is indeed a tough question. If we only brought one writer out of hardship and persecution into a safe haven where she can write freely and prosper, it would be an achievement that would legitimize the entire setup of an origination like ICORN.

On the other hand, there are brutal choices and priorities to make because we would soon collapse if our goal was to help all persecuted writers. In close alliance with International PEN (and in cooperation with many other international organizations, and first and foremost our member cities), we are developing an application and placement process that I think is quite unique.

There must be a couple of individual ICORN writers whose stories you find particularly inspirational or highlight the successes of your organization. Would you be willing to share them?

The first writer I worked with was Mansur Rajih, whose story in many ways became formative for my engagement and destiny in ICORN. He escaped his outer prison in Yemen, but he also fought to break free from his inner prison for many years after arriving in our city of refuge. His story is still a source of impression and inspiration.

I also remember the first guest writer to the city of Tromsø, far up north in Norway. Easterine Kire Iralu from the Indian state of Nagaland (situated in the north east of India, near Burma). She would write a poem to every person she encountered. So when she arrived in Tromsø, she met 220 persons and published the same amount of poems. You can imagine, the publisher could count on at least 220 dedicated customers.

Stories like this are mounting up, as the network is expanding, and we need them, of course, as sources of inspiration for the enormous challenges ahead of us.

Read Elizabeth’s bio.

In this video created by Rattapallax magazine exclusively for Sampsonia Way, the poet Edward Hirsch talks about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s deep and lasting influence on him. Neruda went into exile in 1949 after the Radical Party President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism and issued a warrant for Neruda’s arrest. After being in exile for nearly 30 years and winning the Novel Prize for literature, he returned to Chile at the invitation of president Salvador Allende, where he read to a crowd of 70,000 people.

Hirsch has been reading Neruda since he was a kid. He is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently Lay Back the Darkness, and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. In this interview, Hirsch speaks about the weight exiled writers bare and reads his poem about reading Neruda while working in a box factory.

The interview is presented by Rattapallax magazine and produced by Ram Devineni, the magazine’s editor and publisher. Now in its tenth year, Rattapallax is more than a literary magazine. It is a publisher and film company that seeks to “create international dialogue using literature and focus on what is relevant to our society.” This means creating wildly inventive films, creating “webseries” with literary themes, and hosting events worldwide.

Brenda Cárdenas reading outside of House Poem on Sampsonia Way, Photo © Renee Rosensteel

The first week of July, poet Brenda Cárdenas visited Sampsonia Way to give a reading with Francisco Aragón. The event was sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh in partnership with Cave Canem and Letras Latinas.

A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Cárdenas is the author of two poetry collections, From the Tongues of Brick and Stone (Momotombo Press) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press). She is also the co-editor of Between the Heart and the Land / Entre el Corazón y la Tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest and a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Rather than clinging to what she calls the “illusion” of a “pure culture,” Cárdenas writes in a blend of English and Spanish as a way to celebrate the cultural hybridity of her heritage.

You are the daughter of immigrants. Where were your parents from?

My dad is Mexican and my mother is German. My father’s parents came in the twenties. My grandfather had a brother who was already in Milwaukee and, eventually, many relatives made the journey there. My grandfather and his brother married my grandmother and her sister and all the family came to the United States. I grew up around all my father’s nuclear and extended family, including his cousins, who I called tío and tía (uncle and aunt). That is why I think I retained so much of the culture and the language.

Your poem “When We Moved Away from Tía Elia’s and Uncle Karel’s, 1968” illustrates how you grew up in an environment infused with multiple cultures and, and, above all, the hybrid language in which you write.

The poem presents my memories of my Aunt Elia —daughter of Mexicans— and her husband Karel —first generation immigrant from Yugoslavia. My father and his sister got married on the same day and they all moved into the same house. So there were all these languages being spoken in my house: there was my uncle who was learning English but spoke Slovenian, and there was my father’s and my aunt’s Spanish and English.  All the in–laws in my family who were not Mexican learned some Spanish, even the Yugoslavian guy. In that poem he is the one who named me ‘cacahuate mantequilla’ (peanut butter).

After reading your poems, it seems like the mix of English and Spanish you use is not a translation or a combination, but a language in its own right.

Some people will say that this mix is a language. Rosaura Sánchez, the Chicana linguist who wrote Chicano Discourse, looks at conversations that go from Spanish to English or de Inglès a Español. She explains how this discourse makes use of its own invented words and how speakers switch from one code to another at certain places in their sentences, which leads to a completely different language. I think that if this mix is not a language, it’s at least a dialect. It’s very natural for some people and reflects their retention of their latinidad (Latinity).

As a child I heard all this mixing of languages and I mixed them in my mind. But each immigrant’s case is different. In some cases where the adults of the families are the first generation of immigrants, the kids might speak one language in school and another at home, and the languages don’t mix. It depends also on the region of the country where the immigrants are living. Gloria Anzaldúa writes about that in Borderlands: La Frontera. She writes about all these different registers—pachuco Spanish, calò, chicano Spanish, Tex Mex, etc. But here Anzaldúa is also not writing about immigrants but, rather, about Chicanos/as, and they did not immigrate to the U. S.; instead, the border crossed them after the Mexican-American War.

This explains why you defend your poetry as inter-lingual instead of bilingual.

When I think of the word bilingual, I think of that as meaning two languages —you take a poem and you translate it into another language. I do that, but it’s not what I do most often. Most of my poems combine both languages and I use the words inter-lingual or trans-lingual to describe them. It’s a switching back and forth between codes. It’s a weaving.

Photo © Renee Rosensteel

You also have some whole poems in Spanish. How do you choose which language to write in?

Sometimes I write poems in Spanish and translate them, but sometimes I write very sonic poems that incorporate a lot of language play in Spanish only. If I translate those into English, they lose all of the meaning; all of the nuances and humor are lost.

You have an amazing flexibility and often cross borders. Your scholarly background is interdisciplinary; your poems are inter-lingual; and you write free verse, prose poems, Sapphics, and sonnets…

I’m interested in liminal spaces, in the spaces in between. That interest comes from often feeling like a crossroads–like I have one foot in one world and the other in another world, as do many other transcultural people. If you have been living in the United States for a while and you go to Mexico you are not Mexican enough for the Mexicans (they used to call you pocho). And in the United States you are certainly not American enough, or privileged enough or white enough.

Do you still feel like you have one foot in Mexican culture and one foot in the culture of the United States?

When I was younger I felt that more; I felt as if I didn’t fit anywhere. But as I grew up, I started to look more at the syncretic or interstitial spaces, and I wanted my work to celebrate those spaces. When I do readings, Latino teenagers come up to me and say, “Wow, I didn’t know you could mix these words in this way.” Yes, you can! Language is always changing. Change is part of life. If the molecules and atoms that make up your skin change everyday, why would language be any different?

Does your poetry take a political stance when it illustrates the influence of Spanish language and culture in the United States?

That is the other thing that attracts me to those liminal spaces. It’s not just that the English takes over the Spanish; it goes both ways. I’m not against somebody who says, “I want to keep my language as pure as I can.” But I really don’t believe there is a pure anything. It’s not a pure race, it’s not a pure culture, it’s not a pure language.

Was it challenging to publish your work because it’s inter-lingual?

It’s very hard to publish an inter-lingual book. I sent it to many first book contests and it didn’t win anything. Perhaps the poems or the book were not as strong as others that won those contests, but I can’t help but wonder if the mixing of languages and my refusal to italicize the Spanish might not have had a bearing on how long it took me to publish the book.

Did any publishing houses ask you to italicize the Spanish?

No, no publisher asked me to do that, but I know this makes it even harder for the monolingual English readers, because they are used to seeing foreign word italicized. But for me this is not a foreign language—not any more foreign than English is to the Americas.

Do you face criticism because your work is inter-lingual and “messes” with language?

When I was named the poet laureate of Milwaukee earlier this year, the newspaper announced it and said that I liked to blend languages. There was a man who wrote an email to all the editors and copied it to me. He said my work was an abomination. He said “the students cannot pass in school because they don’t have the proper English and now Brenda is being held up as a model…” He was really patronizing and racist and I didn’t respond. The problem is that he probably represents a lot of people out there: Arizona, hello.

Letras Latinas, the literary program at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, seeks to enhance the visibility of Latino writers. Why are institutions like this needed in the United States?

Because they refuse to believe that Latinos should be silent about their cultures, about the linguistic terrorism they confront, and all the ways in which Latinos are still not treated equally in this country. And because they also celebrate the huge diversity that exists in Latino/a literature both in terms of the writers’ cultural backgrounds and the various styles they write in and subjects they write about. The United States’ literary world would have ignored Latino writing and kept it always in the margins without the help of institutions like Letras Latinas and presses like Bilingual Review Press or Arte Publico Press.

Photo © Renee Rosensteel

Do Latino poets face a pressure to write about so-called “Latino issues?”

Some people are looking for some latinidad to surface in your work and, if they don’t find it, they might feel frustrated. But I really believe that that’s changing a lot. Now we have a real diversity among the Latino writers: those who write fully in English, others who use a kind of Spanish syntax beneath their English or who translate modismos (idioms) in a literal way to create nuances beneath the surface of their poems—nuances that will be understood best by the bilingual reader. There are also some Latino/a poets who are not interested in exploring issues of cultural identity and more interested in other matters of being. Some refuse to use the expected iconography in their work. After all, to decide what is Latino can lead to problematic stereotyping

How are Latino writers responding to the Arizona law?

I think that it’s too soon to see many poems published on this issue yet, but I’m sure we are going to see them. The idea that families will be separated and I could be arrested for giving a ride to an undocumented immigrant—it’s just insane. And they also passed the law to ban ethnic studies, which is going to have a huge effect on the literary and cultural studies that scholars are undertaking and teaching. It’s so silly: If a school is offering an American Literature course, it better include some Latino, Asian-American, Native American, and African-American writers at least. If not, the course will not be representing United States literature; it would be so full of gaps, it would be a lie.

Read Sivlia’s bio.

From left to right: Khet Mar, Whan Than, Linn Thit Nway Oo, George Wilson, Than Htay

The Mexican War streets have a particular smell: a faint odor of burning wood, pepper, and spices. This smell so permeated my childhood, I didn’t notice it until I moved away for college. Coming back home, I would drink in the smoky aroma that settles on the neighborhood in the late mornings and lingers on into the evenings.

It’s the smell of Wilson’s Barbecue on the corner of Buena Vista and North Taylor. Owner George Wilson has been a fixture in the neighborhood for fifty years and his slabs of ribs and charred chicken have marked countless graduations, confirmations, family reunions or just those summer days when it’s too hot too cook.

Naturally, when I thought how I could welcome Burmese writer Khet Mar and her family to the neighborhood of my youth, I thought of Wilson’s.

Khet Mar left Burma in 2009 after her relief work for the victims of Cyclone Nargis attracted the attention of the authorities, whose official line was that relief work wasn’t needed. Fearing arrest, she traveled to Pittsburgh to become City of Asylum’s writer-in-residence there. She came with her husband, the artist Than Htay Maung, and her two sons, Linn Thit Nway Oo, 9, and Wan Than, 13.

Outside Wilson’s

Visiting Khet Mar, I am often greeted by the smells of sour soup or stewing fish. While working on my article on the Burmese refugee community in Pittsburgh, she accompanied me to a monastery where we were served spicy curry, dried fish in oil, and mounds of rice. It was my first introduction to Burmese food and I was eager to return the favor.

On the walk over to Wilson’s I asked Wan Than what his favorite food is. He said rice, ubiquitous in Burmese meals.

“How do you like American food?” I asked

He wrinkled his nose and said he didn’t like it. Linn Thit Nway Oo added that he wasn’t hungry. My heart sank but I stubbornly refused to believe they wouldn’t fall in love with Wilson’s.

Waiting for our order inside Wilson’s

Once there, I ordered us two slabs of ribs and sides of peppered collards. Wilson’s is a no-nonsense kind of place with its huge ovens set into unadorned walls. Since it mostly does take out, it only has one table, which is set out on the sidewalk during the summer months. The five of us circled up out there.

We dug in. The ribs were just like I remembered them, tender pork falling off the bone, the meat soaked in a smoky sauce with just the right amount of kick. While we were eating, I asked the boys about their experiences in America. Wan Than earliest memory of Pittsburgh was that it was dark and cold because they arrived early in the morning. The boys were mesmerized by the snow.

“We don’t have snow in Burma,” he said. When Linn Thit Nway Oo first saw snow, he made a snowball and tried to keep it in the freezer. He quickly learned that there would be plenty more where that came from and he didn’t need to save handfuls.  They both said they really like their school, but that it is different from schools in Burma.

Linn Thit Nway Oo in his school uniform in Burma

“What makes it different?” I asked.

“Here they give you lunch and breakfast!” Linn Thit Nway Oo said. Wan Than added that they studied English in Burma, but struggled when they first arrived because everyone spoke so fast. Now the boys seem to be ably navigating the packed schedule of American students with sports, camps, and activities.

Wan Than enjoying ribs at Wilson’s

Wan Than is a little more reserved that his younger brother, who, like any 8-year-old, can barely sit still. This summer, they had their first experience with sleep-away camp, and Linn Thit Nway Oo busied himself by listing all their activities. “Shoot guns, shoot bb guns, shoot arrows, go fishing, go swimming.”

“Is camp your favorite thing about America?” I asked

“No! The internet,” Linn This Nway Oo said. Wan Than explained that they didn’t have Internet in Burma and were excited to play computer games when they got here. They also spend a lot of time learning about American music on YouTube. Linn Thit Nway Oo has an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary American hip-hop and named a dozen or so of his favorite acts including Usher, Nick Minaj, and 50 Cent.

Wan Than in his school uniform in Burma

“We can’t listen to their music because we don’t understand it!” Khet Mar rolled her eyes. “They say our music sounds like people wailing.”

Than Htay Maung added they prefer the Beatles and Cliff Richards.

A potential family feud about music was cut short by George Wilson, who came out to greet his customers.  Now in his eighties, he usually just mans the pits in the early afternoon. Since he lives above the restaurant, it’s easy for him to pop on by and visit his customers and neighbors.

Linn Thit Nway Oo enjoys a rib

“I love to see people eat!” He said. “It just seems so healthy to watch people enjoying their food.” He instructed the boys to take slices of white bread and soak up the sauce that he is famous for.  Wilson learned to make it from his great grandfather in his native Louisiana.

“That sauce was made by slaves,” he said. “They wouldn’t talk about it though. If you asked them about slavery they’d run you out of the house.”

His great-grandfather and grandfather barbecued in an old tub with chicken wire stretched over it—a set-up they could moved from place to place. Wilson trained as a butcher in Little Rock and came north as a teenager when his father got a job in Pittsburgh. After a stint in the army, Wilson returned to Pittsburgh and started barbecuing in his backyard in Manchester. Ten years later he moved to North Taylor.

He said his building used to be a furniture store. “The owner named his price,” he added. “It was about as much money as I had in my pocket. Worth a lot more now.”

Wilson regaled us with tales of what the neighborhood was like fifty years ago. He told us that he and his friends used patrol the neighborhood back in its crime-ridden days. “Neighborhood has changed a lot,” he said. The conversation was getting a bit too serious for Linn Thit Nway Oo, who turned our attention to a more important topic: how he wants a puppy.

“Um, no,” Khet Mar declared.

George Wilson with Linn Thit Nway Oo

Luckily an 8-year-old’s attention span isn’t very long and he soon became involved with trying to climb a nearby street sign. While Wilson told me about his time in the Army, a neighbor came over and started chatting with Than Htay Maung, Khet Mar, and, Wan Than. When the neighbor found out that Than Htay Maung is an artist, he went back into his house to bring out a wire sculpture that he made.  It was a housefly, complete with flapping wings.

We all crowded around the ingenious sculpture and Wilson made his way back inside.

“I’m going to let y’all enjoy your dinner,” he said.

Wan Than seems to take after his father, who is an installation artist and recently completed a giant mural on the side of their house. Wan Than has been drawing since he was small and Khet Mar used his work to illustrate a book of her essays published in Burma. He still paints and draws and says he “maybe” wants to be an artist. He likes to go to the library and look at books about art, but hates going to the museum because his dad “takes too long to look at things.”

I asked him if he missed Burma and he said he didn’t, except his misses his Grandmother. He also has a hard time keeping in touch with his friends because they don’t have Internet.

Linn Thit Nway Oo and Wan Than at their school in Burma

“If you could get in touch with them, what would you say?” I asked.

“I’d say I’m happy here,” he replied.

“In America the houses have air conditioners, freezers, and dishwashers,” Linn Thit Nway Oo interjected.

Wan Than has a more serious take. “Here you have more freedoms,” he said. “In Burma you can’t go to camp, or go swimming. There’s no Internet. No libraries.”

Khet Mar and Linn Thit Nway Oo after our meal

It had been a hot day, but now the sky was clouding over and the wind was picking up. We decided to pack up our leftovers and head back before the rain. We pushed back their seats and rubbed our full bellies. Linn Thit Nway Oo, who wasn’t hungry when we left the house, had a half dozen bones on his plate and so did his brother. Maybe Wan Than has changed his mind about American food.

Read Elizabeth’s bio.

Photos of at Wilson’s by Elizabeth Hoover

Photos from Burma courtesy of Khet Mar

Photo ©: Than Htay Maung

By Silvia Duarte

Since she was 19-years-old, Khet Mar has been persecuted by the Burmese government. She has been arrested, tortured, incarcerated, and threatened, but she has remained a warrior without guns. She fights with her writing, her political activism, and her social work.

In 2009, she was interrogated by intelligence officers for 20 straight hours and released. Afraid she would be arrested again, she left her country to become the writer-in-residence in City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. Sitting in her living room on Sampsonia Way and sipping a green tea, she told me how the Burmese government has impacted her life, oppressed the Burmese people, and created a reign of terror.

Even while relating these disturbing stories, Khet Mar never raised her voice or lost her calm—except when she mentioned the military government in Burma. “The generals don’t deserve mercy,” she said.

In this interview Khet Mar details the crucial moments in her life and offers a rare glimpse into life under the secretive regime of the Burmese military junta, including how the publishing industry operates under the thumb of government censors.

This is the first time Khet Mar has been able to tell, for print, her life story, openly and without fear of repercussion.

In your essay “Night Flow” you describe the poverty in Maletto, the village you grew up in. You write about how your adolescent friends worked cutting chillies instead of going to school. They were paid with a small amount of chillies, which they then sold as the only way to help their families to survive. How was it that you were able to attend school?

I was able to go to school because my grandparents were the principals of an elementary school in Maletto and then my mother became a teacher there. My family was one of the few for whom education had a great value, even though they were poor too. Another important aspect was that Maletto didn’t have a high school and most of my friends didn’t have the money to travel to another town’s school every day.

The first military junta came to power in 1962, before you were born. You grew up under a dictatorship. Was the country of your childhood different than the country today?

Khet Mar outside of her home on Sampsonia Way. Photo ©: Than Htay Maung

Today, most of the kids don’t have a chance for education and instead they do many jobs to survive, just like my friends in Maletto. However, my friends and I were not as threatened as children are today. Now children are forced to be soldiers. The military sexually harasses, assaults, and even rapes children. Also, children are afraid their parents will be killed or arrested any moment.

One character who often appears in your writing is your grandmother. Once you told me that she was crucial to your writing career. How did your family contribute to your success as an essayist, poet, journalist, and fiction writer?

My father was a big reader, and I read many of his books when we lived together. Unfortunately, my parents got divorced when I was six and I had to move to my grandmother’s house. I was lucky because she loved to read too. I had access to two libraries: my father’s translations of English literature and my grandmother’s collection of classic Burmese authors.

Since my early childhood I was interested in writing. When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a story for school and showed it to my grandmother. Since then she encouraged me to be a writer. After the 1988 uprising, which was started by students at Yangon University, many universities were closed for three years and I had a lot of time to read and write. My grandmother read everything I wrote and said I should submit my short stories to magazines and newspapers. But I was afraid, because I grew up in a village and I was not sure that the editors in a big city like Yangon, the former capital of Burma, would like my work. My grandmother told me: “If you don’t send in those stories, I will.” In August 1989, I took three different stories to three magazines and talked with the editors; all three were accepted for publication and two of them were published.

What happened to the third story?

It was censored. I wrote about a girl who preferred to stay in her room, because her family was different than her. She was always behind the bars of her window. The windows in Burma are open all the time because of the heat, so they all have iron bars. In my story I told in detail how this girl felt lonely. The censorship officers thought I was writing about Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has been under house arrest since 1989 and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. But the story was not about her; it was actually a story about loneliness. The censorship officers in my country are paranoid.

Tell me about the process that a magazine or a newspaper needs to follow to get a story published in Burma.

Every editor has to show all articles to the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division of the Ministry of Information. They can’t do it by e-mail; they personally have to go to the censorship department and present all the content and photos of each issue. The officers revise the issue and, if they accept it, the editors can print it. After printing the issue, the editor again presents it to the Registration Division. If some articles are further censored at that point, the officers tear out the pages they consider dangerous. My story was censored in its second revision; so it was torn out. It’s important to say that the head of this department is a military captain and a man who has never read literature.

Even though your story didn’t have a particular political message, at that time you were already an activist. How did you get involved in the pro-democracy movement?

In 1986, I started studying at the university. In September 1987, the government devalued our currency in a very strange way: They canceled all denominations of our currency except for bills that were divisible by 9, because 9 was ‘the lucky number’ of the top General. However, the government didn’t let you exchange the bills that had been abolished. So, except for those who were closely associated with the government leaders, no one had real money in their hands, only useless cancelled denominations. Young students who came to Yangon from all around the country could barely pay tuition fees or cover living expenses. I was affected too and I didn’t hesitate to join my university friends when they started the protests against the government.

The currency crisis was still affecting the nation in 1988 and was one of the causes of that year’s uprising. Did you participate then?

In 1988, there was a fight between a group of engineering students and some guys who were hanging out on the street. The problem was that the police came to stop the fight and shot a university student to death. The Burmese population was already angry because of the currency crisis, but they became furious after the killing.

I was angry and sad. On March 16, 1988, I joined a march from my university to the main university in Yangon. That day is now known as the Red Bridge Day. When we tried to pass the barriers, the soldiers blocked the road and shot at us. I ran away. It was horrible. Some of my classmates were killed, and some of my girlfriends were raped by soldiers. They government didn’t give us a choice, we had to react. After that, I became deeply involved in the pro-democracy movement and I became a leader in my village.

What was your role as a leader?

Khet Mar reads to her two sons. Photo ©: Than Htay Maung

I recruited people for the movement. I organized a protest against the government in Maletto with hundreds of people. We went by boat to a town called Meubin and joined protesters from other villages. I participated in many demonstrations starting in 1988 and, in 1991, I joined the protest of university students who were demanding freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. In 1991, I distributed political poems with my friends from school. The best-known poem was about a dog that bit the hand of its owner, alluding to the soldiers who killed the same people who pay their salaries with their taxes. After that, the intelligence department arrested me.

In “Midnight Callers” you describe your experience in the interrogation center. You write that the lowest point was when you couldn’t finish one of your meals, because your stomach and back hurt so much after the interrogators had kicked you for many hours. The next day they brought in the same unfinished plate of food and you threw up when you tried to eat it again. Despite the pain, you didn’t give your interrogators any names or important information. What happened that day?

I was blindfolded, so I could only hear. One of my friends was in the room with me and was blindfolded too. He didn’t know I was there because I was not speaking, but I recognized his voice. The interrogators asked him to reveal the names of people involved with us and he quickly gave them the names and told them about our secret meetings. At that time only students had access to the university buildings, but some of the movement leaders went there to organize the students. I used to find student IDs for them so they could get into the buildings. My friend also revealed the names of movement leaders who went to the university, how we distributed poems in the movement, and the strategies we had for the future. When I heard him reveal our secrets I was really angry with him. But after many months I understood: he was tortured too much.

But you were tortured for ten days.

Yes, but everybody is different. Everybody reacts differently, depending on the situation. My friend couldn’t think fast and that was the problem. I also gave names to the interrogators, but I only said the names of my friends who had already died.

You were sentenced to ten years in prison, but you were released after only a year as a result of an amnesty. What was your biggest fear after you were released?

I had many fears. I was afraid of being a HIV-positive. In the winter we slept on a concrete floor, and most of the prisoners got sick. A nurse came every day to inject us with medicine, but she used the same needle for all the prisoners. I was in the same cell with prostitutes, drug addicts, and homeless who already were HIV-positive. I didn’t catch the disease, but I know many women who were infected with AIDS after being in jail for a while.

I was very afraid of a future without work too. As a former political prisoner, it was impossible to get a job at the government offices. Also, the owners of businesses didn’t want us as their employees. I wrote a short story about a friend of mine who died because she couldn’t work after she was released from prison. I was also afraid of being persecuted and arrested again.

Read more about Khet Mar’s experiences in jail.

However, you continued your work as a writer and journalist. What kind of work were you able to do?

I’m really grateful to the editors of the magazines I worked with, because they published my writing even though they knew I was a former political prisoner. I started writing short stories and essays for the magazines. Then, I became a journalist in order to have money to survive. I wrote many social, educational, environmental, and business articles for different media outlets. I got more and different readers when I started to write these journalistic articles. Before my readers were mostly people who loved literature, but after I started writing journalism I attracted new readers who were interested in news and information. I like being a journalist, but I prefer being a literary writer. I especially like writing short stories and essays. I have written about two hundred short stories and essays and over one hundred journalistic pieces.

After establishing yourself as a journalist, you started volunteering in schools.

Khet Mar working in a school after the Nargis Cyclon. Project. Photo ©: Than Htay Maung

In 2005 I began working as a volunteer teacher in an orphanage school where the kids had lost their parents to AIDS and were themselves HIV-positive. In 2006 I started organizing for other schools, such as Monastic Education School and Charity School. I collected money, hired teachers, and looked for food for the children, among other things.

In 2007, you were one of the leaders of a book club that began meeting in the American Center. Where did this idea come from?

I made many friends while I was in jail; they were political prisoners too. Some of them had the idea of starting a book club. When I was studying English at the American Center in 2007, they asked me to be one of the leaders. Each leader had to bring two students in their twenties and suggest books to read and discuss. We tried to teach the students how to analyze the texts that they read, based on the political context. But we didn’t know if we had infiltrators in the group, so we never were explicit. We just hoped they got the message of democracy, and they did: Some of them were active leaders in the Saffron Revolution.

In September 2007, you came to the United States to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. There you wrote the essay “Night Flow,” which tells how you spent your nights crying, but you don’t say why. The only clue you give your readers to the cause of your distress is the date; it was the time of the Saffron Revolution in Burma. Most of your writing doesn’t give a context for people who don’t know what is happening in Burma. How difficult is to write a piece in that way?

It’s very difficult and it’s especially trying. First, I wrote this story and included all the detail. I explained how frustrating it was to watch all the images of the Saffron Revolution on TV, but of course the censorship wouldn’t allow that version to be printed. And yes, that is a problem, if you read Burmese texts and you are not familiar with the situation in Burma, you can’t understand. That is one of the biggest crimes of the military government: They make us talk and write in code. We can’t express ourselves as in a normal society.

The Cyclone Nargis devastated your country in May 2008 and killed more than 100,000 people. The government denied that the cyclone caused any damage and persecuted anyone who tried to help the survivors. Despite that, you began doing relief work for victims. What made you want to become involved?

Surveying the damage done by Cyclone Nargis.

Nargis affected me in a direct way: I lost my books and important documents, because the roof of my house was destroyed. However, that was just material damage and every human being can deal with that. The experience that made me want to help people was that one my friends came to my house to tell me that he lost eight nieces and nephews in Nargis. Until then I didn’t have such information because the power was off. When I saw all the suffering and how the government wasn’t helping, I was really moved to act.

What kind of help did you provide to the victims? How difficult was it to help?

There were many soldiers at the entrances of the villages. We told them that we were going to see our parents, even though that was untrue. We saw all the poverty, all the suffering. At that time I was running a magazine and had the money to publish the next issue. I thought, “What is more important, a magazine or people?” I answered myself, “People.” I used the money to buy medicine, food, and clean water. Some of my friends were interested in going to the villages, but we needed to keep a low profile. If I involved too many people there would have been problems, and all the supporters and I would have ended up in jail. So I contacted my friends living abroad in Singapore, Korea, Japan, the United States and other countries. I asked them for help and they started to send money.

Living in Pittsburgh, are you able to maintain connections to your Burmese readers?

Yes. I send my short stories to different magazines in Burma, so I still have to deal with the censorship even though I’m living here. I have to write in the same code if I want to be published in my country. But the good thing is that here I have other choices to say and write what I want.

Which are those choices?

I can talk freely at seminars, conferences, and events that I’m invited to. I also have been interviewed for American magazines and now I write for Sampsonia Way magazine.

How do you continue to contribute to improving the situation in Burma while living here?

One of my responsibilities as a writer is to let readers inside Burma know about the era in which we are living. My way to do that is writing how ordinary people are trying to survive, how they work, and how they think. I also think it is important that people here have a sense of life in Burma. In order to foster that understanding, I have written in Sampsonia Way about my childhood, my education, and the differences between my country and the United States.

How has City of Asylum/Pittsburgh contributed to your writing and diminished your fear?

In Burma, I didn’t have as much time to dedicate to my writing because there was such a great need for social work. Also after I was taken to an interrogation center twice between 2006 and 2009, the possibility that I would be arrested again was very high. Here I have more time to write, and I don’t live with the fear of persecution.

Read our issue about Burma.

Read Silvia’s bio.