WHEN I ASK MY MOTHER ABOUT BEING AND NOT BEING AN ARTIST

“It became important for me to look at my mother as an artist. To recognize and honor her point of view,” says artist LaToya Ruby Frazier about her collaborations with her mother. This gesture—one that upsets traditional notions of who gets to make and who gets to curate art, all while engaging in liberatory art-making approaches—has begun to feel important to me, too.  My writing about my family, especially my mother in RED MISSED ACHES (Switchback, 2010) and my biological father in  YOU DA ONE (Coconut, 2014), has both enhanced and challenged our relationships.  Writing these books was, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, the only thing that felt right for me...

But it is possible that what feels right also feels shitty. I have felt shitty. I have felt uneasy about the one-sided hold over a narrative that is not only mine.  In the interview below, I chat with my mom, Nancy Mendoza, about these un-easy feelings.

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Tamayo: You often ask me what I mean in my poems—and I’m often hesitant to discuss. Pick a poem that you would most like me to explain.

Mendoza:  [Red Mistakes], page 34. What does “stitch” represent in the poem? What does the poem mean, and what does the stitching across the book represent?

Tamayo:  The poem on page 34 in Red Missed Aches (RMA) came from a writing exercise in which I tried to capture what it felt like to sew. I wanted this "sewing feeling" deeply embedded in the cadence of the  poem and not just present as a visual. It's interesting you selected this poem because I also find it like a snag or a snare in the collection. It pulls at language in naggy way—I love this about it. The poem doesn't sound like something I would write—maybe something my body would write?

The stitch and the stitching across the book was inspired by the lineage of writers working with sewing and thread. I am mortified to see that I didn't thank Jill Magi for her book Threads (Futurepoem, 2010), which was deeply influential to me and RMA. Threads, for me, was a consideration on how we tie ourselves back to our  home countries, our ancestors, our lineage—or, how we, possibly, can’t fully tie ourselves.

In RMA, these stitches were also meant to recall sewing as both decoration (embroidery) and wound (scar)—at times beautiful, at times bloodied and painful—often both simultaneously. There's no way to be an immigrant in this country and not experience these things. I wanted that experience to remain ever-present—to not be erased.

Mendoza (via text): Wow. Okay. But you didn’t answer the question.

Tamayo: What is your least favorite poem of mine?

Mendoza: From YOU DA ONE, page 20. “Start flirting now…” This is my least favorite because I perceived a disregard for the "father."  Perhaps I am wrong but that is what I took from that poem. Whether I am correct or not, it made me feel sad.

Tamayo: I’m sorry you felt sad—and I realize that, because you have a different relationship with the people  seemingly identified in the poems, you have a different relationship to the poems themselves. This is something I think about often and I’m regularly uneasy about. Yet, if there is disregard, the disregard is operating on the level of language and connection. In these opening passages, the text is so garbled and interrupted that it has obliterated the people and any possible connections. 

Tamayo:  I see you as an artist. Do you?

Mendoza: No. Not anymore, if that is possible. I stopped creating, writing.  I stopped singing.  If I am an artist, then it is dormant, unfortunately.

Tamayo: Why do you think this has happened? And how do you feel about it?

Mendoza: I had forgotten many things and this dialogue is bringing a lot of dead memories to life.  My dad and my brother were great supporters of my writing. In fact, it was my brother who motivated me to continue writing when I was 11. The first poetry I wrote was love letters to my brother's girlfriends, I kid you not. And my dad was the only one that went to my readings.

But in Colombia, well—back then, writing was not a way to make a living. Heck, not even a professional, Masters degree, PhD in Arts or Business Management could make a decent living. So, fear drove me away from pursuing it—the business of the world, responsibilities and all other LAME excuses.

That is why I cannot be any more proud of you, you honored your gift and wrote without fear. That is true success in my book. So every time I walk into my house and see your books as I enter, I smile, and there is a sense of peace that reminds me that, good or bad, I had something to do with that.

Tamayo: Growing up, we made lots of art together. We would adapt and record fairy tales. We made costumes. You taught me how to cumbia. My desire to create and perform was always nurtured. These collaborations were important to me. How did they impact you?

Mendoza: They saved me, gave me a second chance to redeem myself as a mother and be a better mom than I was in Puerto Rico. I was able to be "present” and see the artist bloom!

Tamayo: In [Red Missed Aches], I mention that you are the first writer I knew in my life. I remember finding your journals and realizing: my mother is a writer.  I wrote, "You are my first philosopher that I'm not going to understand well." If you were interested in writing a book of your own, what would the book be about?

Mendoza: Yes. I always loved the written word. I also always loved that you were a ferocious reader since very small, even when reading my journals, jeje. I started writing a book a couple of years ago, but have not finished it. I stopped writing.  It is called, "My greatest pain, my greatest gift".

Tamayo: The title’s up my alley: multiple, contradictory feelings and selves. Can I read it?

Mendoza: Hmmm, scary thought. Only if you promise that you will see it from the "light" instead of "dark" which it is the very intention of it. Do you think you are ready to open all the pages of "me"?

Tamayo: Lol. You have been my muse. What does this feel like and how has it impacted our relationship?

Mendoza: I love that you say that but I wished I would have been a different muse. Some of your writing reflects a great source of pain and it had to do directly with my life choices. I don't regret leaving your father, because I wanted your childhood to be different than mine, however, I regret the pain this caused you.  At the same time, your writing is brilliant and, in a small scale, I might have to do with that. On a side note, your father and I parted lovingly and that remains to the day. He wanted a different future for you. He held you tight at the airport the day we left to Mexico and he wept as he placed you back in my arms.

Tamayo: As you say that I realize that the muse-aspect might only be evident to me. I finally had the opportunity to meet the amazing and heart-busting poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña a few months ago and within minutes we started talking about you. She said to me “es una mujer muy fuerte,” and I was so happy to hear that she could feel that.  I don’t want to negate the pain because you are right to read it that way—when I write, “Mother I don’t see you. You work often.” (RMA) it would be incorrect to say that this didn’t reflect resentment? anger?  But there are other feelings there too...

Tamayo: Okay. Let's talk about depression. I have struggled with this on-and-off for many years in my life—and at times, it's been hard for you to watch me struggle. I feel my depression is a part of me that I have embraced. I have sensed you've felt differently. Is this the case? If so, why?

Mendoza: Hmmm. Depression, the hardest topic to discuss. A mother never wants her child to be in that dark place, and you want to save her and you can't. Seeing you struggle with depression is a great source of ache in my heart, because I feel that I have much to do with that.  I myself suffered from depression as you may know.

My early childhood, childhood and teenage years were lethal and dark, leading to choices that followed and perhaps you inherited that. Perhaps all of your "holes" were born in my womb.  Medication didn't help. Counseling didn't help. It was only a cold, real close look at the mirror one day that sparked a beam of light in all the darkness and I freed myself.  With all the corrupted ways of the world, the hunger, abuse, and despair, it is possible to process/help/change everything in the "light" rather than "dark."

I have struggled with you because I know there is a source of incredible power inside of you that can help you see life in a different light—the same source where your talents flows from and that we all have that choice. It has been impossible for me to convince you. My deepest, most powerful failure; my only failure.  Everything else in my life that went wrong I do NOT consider as failures, simply experiences to grow and learn from. My inability to convince you that your mind is more powerful than you think, more so than any hormonal imbalance, and capable of healing anything is my one and only biggest failure.

Tamayo: We disagree about the nature of depression. I'm happy that you have a found a "different light" but what I (and many others) experience is biochemical and no amount of  positive thinking is going to change that. I wish you wouldn't consider this a failure because in some ways that negates part of who I am.

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Tamayo: One of the ways I know Colombia is through the memories you and Grandma and Grandpa have shared over the years. Despite being born there, Colombia exists in my imagination—at times I wished we had never left. But then I realize I don't  know what I'm talking about. How do you feel about having  left Colombia?

Mendoza: I love Colombia: great people, great food, beautiful family, amazing sites. But I always thought I was born in the wrong country.  I was not born to be submissive, cook, and clean while the man works. Or, stay home while the man parties, wait on the husband 24-7,  be told what to wear or not. "La mujer nacio para aguantar al el hombre, la esposa nacio para ser sumisa, es la ley de la vida y tienes que aceptarlo," said my grandmother to me when I was 19 years old.  I thought to myself, "this is some kind of crock."   I thought marriage was nothing more than a life sentence. My life purpose was to get out of Colombia and save my kid: "I will not have my daughter wait on anyone but herself, and she will not 'need' a man but chose a man if she wants to, etc.” That is a small review of what I think about leaving Colombia. I hope this is not so disappointing.  I do love Colombia, the country though.

Tamayo: This makes sense to me. You were doing what you thought was best for us and I love and respect you for that decision. In this current project I’m working on, DORA/ANA/GUATAVITA, I spend a portion of the text thinking through an alternate version of me that grows up in Guatavita—so perhaps a life in Colombia, the version you love, is not an impossibility for me.

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Tamayo: Do you have any questions for me? I  have one last one but you should go first…

Mendoza: I love your conversation about me with poet Cecilia Vicuña. Thank you. I hope the other feelings are fulfilling or of clarity, a parent does the best they can with the tools they have at the time. The intention is always the best, and the love is … well, the only thing I was clear about, when I became a 19 year old mom. When you know better you do better. Sadly to say, time is relentless and goes by too quickly to remedy on time, so when it comes to you, I live in the "I wish" world.   As I type, I cry again. I wish... I could have done things differently; but then again, things like you say in “you are the first writer I knew in my life. I remember finding your journals and realizing: my mother is a writer. This changed me."  This could have changed too and I would not want that.

Mendoza: How do you feel about my comment, "your father wept as he placed you back in my arms" when we left Colombia.

Tamayo: I was overwhelmed. You have much inside of you that I know so little about and this scares me.

Mendoza: Will you ever write a poem that reflects what I have done right?

Tamayo:  There are several sections in Red Missed Aches in which your “rightness” (to use your words) is reflected. For example, I write, “she dazzle me…  that tornado that draws the camera to the window/” after I watched you fearlessly intervene on an incident of domestic abuse we witnessed on the streets of Carolina. I was in awe of you. Like, all I could think was this is bravery. There are moments like this—moments where you taught me courage and loyalty and integrity—throughout my works, that I hope you see or, maybe, let yourself see...

Tamayo: Last question: if we were to work on a book together what would you like us to write about?

Mendoza: I would like you to translate my written memoirs into poetry form.

Tamayo: Follow up: what process would we follow for these translations?

Mendoza: I love you,I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you. I love you, I live you, I love you, I love you.