Kevin Gonzalez

Photo from fishhousepoets.org

Kevin Gonzalez grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He writes short fiction as well as poetry. He attended college in Pittsburg and received his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in poetry as well as a second Masters degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in fiction. He received the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He is relatively new to the literature scene having published his first book in 2009 entitled Cultural Studies, although he did publish a chapbook published in 2007. He has had poems in anthologies of both American and Latino literature. Gonzalez currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin and is the co-editor of jubilat, as well as being the co-curator for the Monsters of Poetry reading series.

Photo from howitgit.com

The poems by Gonzalez in the anthology The Wind Shifts can be appreciated by everyone, but may hold a larger significance to Puerto Ricans because they explore the Puerto Rican culture in a contemporary way. Gonzalez writes about experiences he had in his life, both growing up in Puerto Rico and after he moved to the United States. However, no matter what time period he writes about there always seems to be some connection to Puerto Rico. His poem “To Roberto Clemente” is about the connection he has with Clemente despite having moved on from both Puerto Rico and Pittsburg, he still picks the paper up every morning and checks for any news of him.                

               

In several of his other poems the anthology Gonzalez writes about his life growing up. He often chooses to write in the second person as a way to put the focus on the reader and to draw them in, while still being self-exploratory. This style of writing does really well when reading the poetry as a window, it draws you in and allows you to put yourself in the middle of what the poem is talking about. This works really well in a poem entitled “Cultural Silence; or, How to Survive the Last American Colony.” This poem really draws you into the political scene of Puerto Rico by putting you in the shoes of person at a bar where political talk is prohibited, yet tourists can talk about it and you can feel how this Puerto Rican feels when Gonzalez writes “Here, you will want to drop your own politics/like an egg crate. Don’t.”

Photo from indianareview.blogspot.com

Gonzalez often talks about sports and growing up in Puerto Rico. In an interview with a fellow poet, Gonzalez talks about the connection that sports gave him with his father beyond just the love of boxing and baseball that many Puerto Ricans have. There are two poems about boxing matches, both involving Tito Trinidad. His one poem, “The Night Tito Trinidad KO’ed Fernando Vargas,” talks about the power of sports in Puerto Rico and its ability to bring together people and to make them forget that “we live in a colony/ & the stripes of our waving flag/ yield a black shadow under/ pirated fireworks.”

While Gonzalez’s topics may be mainly about Puerto Rico and they will appeal to anyone with ties to the island, there are aspects of every poem that anybody can relate to. If they can’t relate, the poems provide a wonderful mirror into someone else’s life and culture.

Heat and The Devil's Highway

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea really opened my eyes to how a border crossing is. I clearly have no experience with anything remotely like that experience and Urrea’s ability to meld fact and fiction together allowed me to try to understand what these immigrants put themselves through and what they risk when they come to the U.S. in search for a better life.

One of the passages that struck me the most was about the progression of hyperthermia. Since I am considering being a doctor this passage interested me as well as helped me understand what these people are fighting in their own bodies as well as the desert. I am not a person who likes heat and this passage really confirmed how dangerous it could be. Heat stress and heat fatigue seem like you could get through them okay, but once you progress to heat syncope it seems almost inevitable to continue down this path unless you are rescued and soon. I wander what the walkers were thinking at the point when they hit heat syncope; many had started off as if this were just a walk in the park and now they are on a quick path to death.

I can’t imagine the determination that it would take to focus on continuing. One of the men, Maximino Hilario, that makes it out alive in the end lost his water jug earlier; how did he make it when many of the others didn’t? What did he do differently or was he just lucky to survive everything? When they put him in his bed he even looked “dapper,” did he have some sort of survive the heat and overcome thirst in the desert gene? This book is a testament to the difficulty of crossing the border and the desert, but also gives a look at mankind’s fight to survive in the worst of situations.

Just as a side note, as I was looking at literature about hyperthermia I found that is also being used as a treatment for cancer. I thought it was interesting that something that can bring death is being used to save lives.

The Border in The Guardians

            The Guardians really gave a human face to the border for me. I had heard some things about the border and what happens around it, but I had only received information from news sources that can be more factual in the way they discuss the issues. The Guardians really gave me a window in to how the border and crossing affect not only the lives of the people who traverse it, but their families as well.

            Gabo and Regina have had their families ripped apart by the border. Gabo has a sister he hasn’t seen in many years because she is living in Mexico. Rafa, Regina’s brother and Gabo’s father, has crossed the border many times and is constantly traveling back and forth; probably not seeing his family as much as he would like to. Miguel and Milton may not seem that affected by the border, but when they get involved with Regina and her family they get mixed up in the border drama that is happening for Regina. Miguel’s family is sort of torn apart by the border as his wife gets taken when she is across the border working with her women’s shelter in Juarez.

            The other interesting thing this novel showed me about the border was the gang side of things and just how much power the gangs have on the area. Rafa has crossed the border several times successfully, but just this once he hooks up with the wrong coyote and everything goes wrong. It amazes me how much people are forced to trust the coyotes. They pay their money up front and just hope everything works out for them, once they pay them the Coyotes have what they want and don’t really care what happens to the people they are leading. Unfortunately for Rafa he trusted the wrong person and ended up working for them making methamphetamine until they killed him with a Taser gun. 

Politics and 9500 Liberty

            The film 9500 Liberty is a documentary by Annabel Park and Eric Byler about a controversial immigration law that was enacted in Prince William County, Virginia. The documentary looks at the major players in support and oppositions to the law; such as Greg Letiecq, Corey Stewart, Alanna Almeda, and Elenna Schlossberg. The debate was unique in that blogs played a large part in organization and getting the messages of both sides out to the world. There were many different opinions about the issue and many people were very vocal in their beliefs, which both worried me and inspired me at different points throughout the film.

            One part of this process that made me think was when one of the supervisors retired from the board at the election that fell in the middle of this process. She had clearly had reservations about the bill from the beginning, yet she voted for it three times as the law was passed unanimously three times. Then, when Park is interviewing her she talks about how the hope to stop the bill was in Martin Nohe and that she hopes he would do something. To me this begs the question why didn’t she do something? What was holding her back, were her constituents wanting the law to pass, or was it something else? Since she was leaving the Board I don’t see why she couldn’t have said everything that she said when she went before the Board as a citizen. She said in her interview that she felt like she had to say things now that she couldn’t have said as a Supervisor. I know politics is never straightforward and there are always other things going on, but if she couldn’t speak up on this issue of human rights and racial profiling it makes me wonder what was going on in that town.

            This movie brought to light the political games and protocol, among other things, that occur in a high stakes controversial decision. I was really intrigued and surprised by what the leaders of this community were saying and how they were acting. It really made me think about what was motivating them and what really mattered to them.