Scan barcode
A review by brice_mo
Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora by Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Esther Lin, Janine Joseph
5.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the ARC!
Who do you picture when you hear the word “undocumented”?
You shouldn’t have an image in mind, but you probably do, and The Undocupoets’ brilliantly anthologized Here to Stay will gently but willfully complicate it at every turn, resisting the border-shaped erasure created by political discourse.
The range in themes, styles, and subject matter in this anthology serves as a necessary contrast to this kind of reductionism. Some of these pieces are formally adventurous, whereas others find their shape within the constraints of conformity. In much the same way, some of these fifty-two writers favor a dissolution of borders entirely, while others simply crave assimilation through legal status. Each poet prefaces their work with an artist’s statement, and many of these moved me to tears while also offering aesthetic context.
Hermelinda Hernandez writes about “the cold grammar of immigrant linguistics” and the dehumanizing force of government documentation.
Jan-Henry Gray describes undocumented writing as “an act of forging (something new, one hopes) and a kind of forgery.”
Elmo Tumbokon articulates the tension implicit in representation—that visibility politics is a threat: “To confess my being is to risk my safety.”
What’s most striking about the collection is how rarely these poets choose to strike back. Immigration law is codified violence, and one might expect a series of fiery poems, raging against the machine. Some of those are present here, to be sure, but so many of these pieces seem to view a radical gentleness as the only way forward.
For example, Laurel Chen’s “Greensickness” is the kind of gorgeous that makes your ribcage collapse—“Let me be lawless and beloved.”
Similarly, in “The poem where ants are immigrants and I am the U.S.,” Jorge Quintana writes, “I pray that their next lives / are filled with less mercy / and more sovereignty.”
Poems like this are inarguable. They defy response (except, perhaps, for tears). They are political statements that subvert the language of power. They don’t fit into the categories prescribed by either side of the political spectrum. They can only be accepted.
I think Jane Kuo says it most clearly in her statement of poetics, inviting readers into discomfort: “My poems present the reader with a choice: come here and sit with me or choose not to be implicated, to remain on the outside, eavesdropping.”
It's such a privilege to sit with all of these poets and their art.
Who do you picture when you hear the word “undocumented”?
You shouldn’t have an image in mind, but you probably do, and The Undocupoets’ brilliantly anthologized Here to Stay will gently but willfully complicate it at every turn, resisting the border-shaped erasure created by political discourse.
The range in themes, styles, and subject matter in this anthology serves as a necessary contrast to this kind of reductionism. Some of these pieces are formally adventurous, whereas others find their shape within the constraints of conformity. In much the same way, some of these fifty-two writers favor a dissolution of borders entirely, while others simply crave assimilation through legal status. Each poet prefaces their work with an artist’s statement, and many of these moved me to tears while also offering aesthetic context.
Hermelinda Hernandez writes about “the cold grammar of immigrant linguistics” and the dehumanizing force of government documentation.
Jan-Henry Gray describes undocumented writing as “an act of forging (something new, one hopes) and a kind of forgery.”
Elmo Tumbokon articulates the tension implicit in representation—that visibility politics is a threat: “To confess my being is to risk my safety.”
What’s most striking about the collection is how rarely these poets choose to strike back. Immigration law is codified violence, and one might expect a series of fiery poems, raging against the machine. Some of those are present here, to be sure, but so many of these pieces seem to view a radical gentleness as the only way forward.
For example, Laurel Chen’s “Greensickness” is the kind of gorgeous that makes your ribcage collapse—“Let me be lawless and beloved.”
Similarly, in “The poem where ants are immigrants and I am the U.S.,” Jorge Quintana writes, “I pray that their next lives / are filled with less mercy / and more sovereignty.”
Poems like this are inarguable. They defy response (except, perhaps, for tears). They are political statements that subvert the language of power. They don’t fit into the categories prescribed by either side of the political spectrum. They can only be accepted.
I think Jane Kuo says it most clearly in her statement of poetics, inviting readers into discomfort: “My poems present the reader with a choice: come here and sit with me or choose not to be implicated, to remain on the outside, eavesdropping.”
It's such a privilege to sit with all of these poets and their art.