A l u m n i
P r o f i l e
Rosa Alcala ’91 A Journey INTO THE WORLD OF Academia By Terry E. Ross ’80
R
osa Alcala ’91 describes herself as a “working class kid” who grew up in the Riverside section of Paterson. Today she is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and writes poetry. Many of her poems capture memories of what it was like growing up in the city as the daughter of Spanish immigrants. Neither of her parents attended high school. Her father worked in a dye house factory in Paterson; her mother also worked in various factories in the city, doing mostly assembly line work. Alcala recently published Undocumentaries, a book of poetry that she started writing when she was hired at the university in 2004, her first job after obtaining a Ph.D. “How do you document how you feel when you’re the daughter of factory workers? It was a huge shock to suddenly have an academic lifestyle so different from the way I grew up,” she says. She felt that “other life” slipping away, and knew it wouldn’t be the life her eighteen-month-old daughter would have, so she wanted to write about it and preserve those memories. “Paterson was a great place to grow up,” says Alcala, who grew up in a two-family house on the edge of an industrial section near railroad tracks. She played in the street with other children, was sent on errands to buy bread from the local store, and walked to school—a far cry from a world where parents drive their children everywhere and arrange play dates. “It was ethnically diverse too, which I loved. I think the reason it appears so much in the book is because it was an amazing place.” “I called the book Undocumentaries because I feel it’s very hard to document those things.” The poems are a dialogue about who she is now, as a professor, and the world she came from. While attending William Paterson, Alcala took a lot of English classes and realized that she wanted to write poetry. Since she was from a working-class background, journalism seemed like a more stable career path. She became editor of Essence, a student literary magazine, and was active in organizing poetry readings. During her first two years of college, she worked as an editorial assistant at the Herald News in Passaic. She wrote obituaries, did some reporting, and used her Spanish bilingual skills to help out
Volume 12, Number 1
Spring 2011
when an assignment required an interpreter. In her senior year, she won an alumni fellowship that paid her full tuition and she worked in the alumni office. “It was great to get that fellowship because, up until that time, I was basically paying for my own education,” she says. She participated in the Humanities Honors Program, which she praises for having a major, positive influence. “It was a great experience, and I think participating in that program single-handedly prepared me for graduate school,” she adds. Priscilla Orr, the former director of academic support, a poet, and now an English professor at Sussex Community College, was also a mentor. In particular, Alcala credits Richard Atnally, retired professor of English and director of the Humanities Honors Program for twenty five-years, for encouraging her to enter academia. “He was my central mentor figure from the beginning,” she says. She is also thankful to David Shapiro, poet and professor of art, for encouraging her to write poetry and being the first to suggest that she try translation. “He recommended that I apply to Brown University for graduate school. I did it partly to appease him. It just seemed like I was shooting for something that was beyond me—this Ivy League school—and I was very fortunate to get in. I credit him for believing in me. We still keep in contact via Facebook.” After graduating cum laude from William Paterson, Alcala obtained her M.F.A. in poetry from Brown University. She went on to obtain a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. At the University of Texas, Alcala has the flexibility to create courses that interest her in the Department of Creative Writing and bilingual M.F.A. program. She teaches courses in poetry writing, creative writing, and Latin American and Spanish poets. In her spare time, she translates poetry and literature, including works by Latin American women writers. Alcala is thankful to her parents for giving her the life that they could not have. “They worked hard so that I wouldn’t have to do what they did.” She remembers her father, who died in 1994, clearly saying that to her. “He didn’t want me to do what he did. He didn’t have other options.” w
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