Rigoberto, you’re a graduate of NALAC’s leadership institute. Share something about your experience.
Rigoberto González: ACTIVISM AND INK
It’s one of my fondest memories. I knew I had high energy, high commitment, high expectations and big dreams and for a long time I felt that other people didn’t have those, and then I went to NALAC and I met all these people who shared the same feelings. People who cared about their communities wanted to change things. It was fantastic. The Latino cultural activists were there, and it was across the field – theater, spoken word, everything. I left there feeling that there is a future.
an interview by Charles Rice-González
In 2006, I ran into Rigoberto Gonzalez at the AWP Writers Conference in Austin, Texas.
I was excited
to see him because he was a fellow Latino in a vast event with writers from all over the country. Naively, I asked him, “So have you written anything?”
He stared at me blankly and said,
“Google me, girl.” I did. I also googled Rigoberto before sitting down to interview him and it was a very different experience. Rigoberto Gonzalez is one the most accomplished contemporary Latino writers alive today. He has published 8 books including his memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa which won the National Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has a new book out now, The Mariposa Club, which was released in April 2009 and a new book of poetry, Black Blossoms, set to come out in 2011. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the first Latino to receive the prestigious Frost Place residency. I met Rigoberto Gonzalez in New York City’s East Village at the Yaffa Café on chill. We sat outdoors on a quiet Friday before the dinner crowd would flood the popular eatery. Rigoberto was impeccably dressed in a black shirt, black v-neck sweater, fitted grey blazer, designer slacks and fine leather shoes. He wore his signature sleek, rectangular, black rimmed glasses which emphasize the smile in his eyes.
Well, it certainly doesn’t serve us. It’s a luxury. It’s privilege. And every time I say that people cringe - white people who feel that what I’m saying is that their work is less because it’s not political, which is not what I’m saying. First of all, I wasn’t talking about them. It bugs the hell out of me when I talk about the politics of ethnicity and identity and then they get all upset because they feel excluded. Well, they need to work on that. I’m talking about Latinos; I’m talking about people of color. Then I have the other side, which is more devastating to me, when artists of color join the bandwagon and they say ‘if I don’t write about this issue does that mean I’m not being political?” By just the fact that we are writing, that is a political act. Cause we’re not supposed to be. Hey, I’m supposed to be picking grapes. I was supposed to come here with my family to pick grapes and have children who would pick grapes. That’s not what I’m doing now. I was given an opportunity and I took an opportunity, the last thing I’m going to do is sit on my ass and say “I’m done. I made it. I’m a tenured professor and anything I write will get published. I’m just going to relax? How disrespectful to all those writers and artists who came before me and worked, just like my parents worked, so that some time in the future young artists wouldn’t have to suffer the same things. It’s like those veteran writers are also my parents.
You made choices that brought you to where you are. You chose to go to college. You chose to write, develop your craft, send out work to get published and you chose to work hard. Miracles happen, but there are two hands. There are the hands of whatever divinity you believe in and there are the hands that help you make this art. They have to work together. You can’t just pray for it and it also takes a lot of faith. (Continued on page 12)
el AVISO Summer 2009 |
el AVISO Summer 2008 | 4
an afternoon when spring had just touched the city, releasing it from its winter
You were quoted as saying the United States is the only country where politics in poetry is frowned upon and that you come from a different tradition as a Chicano where there is a necessity for art and politics to co-exist. Who does it serve to separate art and activism?
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