Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban-American writer, translator, and activist Achy Obejas’s latest collection of poems is a moving, thought-provoking bilingual meditation on queer motherhood and raising sons. The free-verse poems, each in both English and Obejas’s own Spanish translation, explore her experiences with parenting, her sons’ boyhoods, divorce, immigration, her Cuban-American and Jewish identities, and more.
“I met him when he was brand new to this earth, like a sea lion cub waiting to launch,” she writes of one son, to whom she is a non-genetic parent. Later, she says, “We have the same eyebrows, he said, proudly ignoring our parallel DNA, the impossibility of resemblance now vanquished by his resolve. No one can confirm their personal destiny but he most definitely will.” In another poem, she looks back up the generations to how the birth of her first son changed her contentious relationship with her own mother.
Later, she writes that her eldest son came home from school one day with something on his mind: “A couple of boys yelled at him: Your moms are queer! Yes, he tells me, I said yes, but they were still so angry, Mami.” She sees a parallel with her own school days, when she was harassed and beat up for not knowing English, but knows these are only two of many instances of hate and bias in the world. Someday she will tell him about other ones, she muses, “But right now all I want to do is sit here, on the barrel, holding hands, marveling at the miracle of his heart and how it just doesn’t understand.”
Not all of her poems relate to queerness, however; in one, she explores how her sons prefer Takis and mac ’n’cheese to plantains—and how everyday decisions around food intertwine with heritage, culture, and socioeconomics. In another, she looks at being the parent of school-age children in an era of school shootings. Later sections of the book further examine her relationship with her own parents and her Cuban roots; another evokes and reworks the V’Ahavta, a fundamental Jewish prayer meaning “and you shall love.”
Observation and anecdote are here, but also insights into resilience, drawn from her experiences. “I’m here to tell you: Hearts break but you can learn to embrace the flawed, the imperfect, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply one more thing that happened on your journey,” she writes.
Obejas looks at the uncertainties, challenges, and joys of loving children, partners, parents, and even ourselves, making us reflect on how relationships and identities intersect and intertwine. Readers will likely be re-readers, coming back time and time again to delve into the layers of meaning. Highly recommended.
