Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

When I think of [tag]Leticia Hernandez-Linares[/tag] I think of energy, a lot of energy. Short in height, tall in stature, her community spirit belies her obvious drive to be continuously creating and moving forward. At the age of 35 she is a Phd candidate, a mother, executive director of the Making Waves program at the Branson School program in Marin County, and an award winning poet and performance artist. What drives this woman forward appears to be a commitment to education and a better understanding and appreciation of the contributions of women, particularly Central American women, and even more particularly El Salvadoran women.

Leticia was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents from El Salvador. The civil war there was “the reason they didn’t go back” and a contributing factor to a “sense of trauma literal or figurative while in a time of transition for many Salvadorans.” According to Leticia “women in particular have to hold it together.” Attending Scripps College, (for women) in Claremont California was a turning point for her. Before then she “was just headstrong” but didn’t know a lot about “history or consciousness.” While there she studied the works of Virginia Woolf, and took courses in Black Feminism and other subjects, that put a “face and name to struggle.” On September 9 of 2006, at Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, she celebrated the fifth anniversary of a performance series where “the woman artist was not the token or the person at the end of a list or line up, but was front and center, the star and the focus.” The title of the event: ?Pinta tu propio mundo/Paint Your Own World ” was inspired by a small gift given to me by one of the writers who came up from Los Angeles to read at the very first event. She sent me a small piece of blue cardboard with the image of Frida Kahlo in a wheelchair painting her self portrait. My poet friend painted the words ‘pinta tu propio mundo’ under it as a message to me that I should paint what I wanted to see in front of me at that point in time in my life.”

While a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania she was gratified to win the William Carlos Williams Prize in 1996, from the Academy of American Poets “one of the few prizes named after a Latino poet.” Now the mother of a two year old she doesn’t see a conflict in saying that her career is in education. According to the Making Waves website they aim to “prepare elementary and middle school students, from communities in San Rafael and Marin City who face limited educational opportunities for academic success in college preparatory classes in high school, and to provide opportunities for college and high school students from diverse, multi-cultural backgrounds to experience careers in education, especially the teaching profession. ?While preparing to apply for the position of Executive Director in Marin she “had to not be humble.” She had always been “conscious to be grateful and humble, part of a larger purpose.” Finding herself in the position of selling her attributes, she came around to asking herself why not? “I have done a lot. I should be proud.” Now she feels like she is setting an example for the kids she works with, when she performs and makes other appearances.

Her first book published by a small press, [tag]?Razor Edges of My Tongue[/tag]? Calaca Press 2002, was originally a [tag]self-published chapbook[/tag]. She has had requests for manuscripts since then, but has apparently been too busy to comply as yet. “I’m trying to be more ambitious. Publishing is really important because of the need to create our own spaces in as many forms as possible.” Perhaps that is a signal that the performance of poetry is her first love. I don’t know for sure, but she did say that she has different versions of poems for print and performance. Her dad was in a rock band called Los Lovers, and she grew up with a love of music that is reflected in her [tag]poetry[/tag]. “There’s always a song that goes with the poem.” No matter what the medium, her quest is to “inform people about Central American culture and history through poetry.”

I’m waiting for the first recording. That’s because I discovered Leticia in live performance a few years ago at La Pe?a Cultural Center in Berkeley, and there is no way to translate on to the page the dynamics in her poetry and presentation. Her upcoming visit to Listen & Be Heard Poetry Caf? to be our [tag]featured poet[/tag] on Friday October 6 is the culmination of more than one year’s worth of e-mails and telephone calls, while both of us have cared for little, little ones. I for one, will be gratified to see the fulfillment of our efforts, and I hope that Vallejo will give her the welcome that she richly deserves.

[tags]featured poet[/tags]

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