Claudia Castro Luna Pens Letter From Seattle's Protest Season

At Literary Hub, Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna writes about Seattle's recent protests, drawing parallels to her childhood, when she would watch her parents protest in her native El Salvador. "Over the past 20 years I’ve watched El Salvador and the US share more in common: the violence of hunger, the violence of guns and drugs, and now massive demonstrations demanding social change," she writes. More: 

When I dwell a little longer on that last similarity, something nuanced and intangible surfaces. In El Salvador then, and in the US now, sorrow and an immense sense of loss permeates the demonstrations. I lived in El Salvador when an estimated 150 thousand attended the funeral of Monseñor Romero, who was killed in 1980 while officiating mass. People marched, at a time of extreme state repression, at great personal risk, wearing their pain and sorrow, thinking of him and of all those who had already died. These days, in streets across the US we see the outpouring of grief over George Floyd’s murder and Black lives lost.

Continue reading at Literary Hub.