Sandra Guzmán on language, lineage, and Daughters of Latin America

Ahead of our upcoming landmark reading in celebration of Daughters of Latin America — hosted by Rosie Perez and including contributors Jamaica Kincaid, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Esmeralda Santiago, and many more — editor Sandra Guzmán talked to us about the joyful work of curating the anthology, the relationship between language and survival, the importance of bringing marginalized voices to the center of our literary conversation, and much more.

The anthology reading at 92NY is shaping up to be a major gathering. Why was it important to you to celebrate these writers not just on the page, but in real life, under one roof?

The curation process has been a textual journey, a visual journey, a spiritual journey, a scholarly journey, and an auditory journey. While curating I would reach out to writers, and we would convene on Zoom where they would often read me their poetry aloud, or even sing. There was a lot of joy and laughter, too. This was part of the process of bringing a multilingual, multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious experience of these voices into the book, so it feels right to me that we would bring that aspect of it to a wider audience. In a perfect world, we would have all 140 women onstage — even the ancestors who are on another plane. It was important for me to bring as many voices as I could to the stage, and what a stage it is — I’m so honored that it’s at 92NY.

There has never been an anthology of Latin American literature quite like Daughters of Latin America. It includes Nobel laureates and emerging voices working in a multitude of languages, literary ancestors from across the centuries and their contemporary aesthetic inheritors, Indigenous activists, and writing representing almost every form and genre imaginable. What was your inspiration for this anthology?

The original inspiration was the international anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, who was able to compile about 210 voices of women of African descent from across two centuries — that exquisite book is our sister publication. Beyond that, I come from a Caribbean Afro Indigenous people who greeted Columbus in our village. We gave them flowers, they bombed us. It’s a powerful legacy — my family survived a genocide, a holocaust. Indo Boricuas are not federally recognized. We were paper genocided — a new and fitting word! We’re not recognized in Boriken, which is the original name of Puerto Rico. But we are here. We exist. Because we have been made invisible by the colonial project of Puerto Rico under Spain and the US, Indigenous Boricuas have always been on the margins. My textual literary tradition is anchored by Toni Morrison’s work, because she brings those who have been erased into the center. It was important for me, as I started to curate these voices, that the women of the Americas who have been marginalized be in the center — the First Nation women, the African women, the Jewish women, the LGBTQ+ women and the Puerto Rican Boricua woman. When you do that, you recognize that there are thousands of cultures in Latin America that most people don’t know. In Mexico alone, for example, you can speak a different language or dialect every day of the year and never speak any of the settler languages like Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, or English. According to UNESCO, every 12-14 days, somewhere in the world, an Indigenous language dies. But as Mixe linguist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, one of the contributors in the anthology says, Indigenous languages do not die. They’re murdered. Latin America is often defined in an imperialistic way, by only Spanish-speaking countries. In this post-colonial anthology, there are women who write in a multitude of languages, showing the diversity of the region. It was important to me to bring those cultures to the center, to create a new canon, to air out the confining and Western definition of what literature is.

Beyond your ambition for who can be included, you seem to be pushing the notion of what we consider “literary” writing forward into a more expansive terrain. Why is it important to you that so many kinds of writing be represented here?

I come from a long line of storytellers who work in the oral literary tradition. Our memory has been kept alive through oral literary modalities. My grandfather was a master fisherman who would have a bonfire every night to repel mosquitos, and around the fire he would tell us stories. That’s how he passed along his traditions to us. My mother was a master storyteller who would take me to visit ancient trees and remind me of my roots and lineage. My cousins, aunts — it’s a family thing, this oral literary heritage. And I see it in Boricua Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her speech on the congressional floor, included in the anthology — responding to a male Republican congressman who called her a bitch — is in that same Boricua oral literary tradition. I have never heard a contemporary speech as eloquent and powerful. You read it, and it’s obvious that it’s literature. It deserves to be read, studied, and understood. As I said before, we must expand the definition of what “literary” is, because along the way we’ve missed some things. The world needs these voices.

Rosie Perez will be hosting the event. How did she become involved?

Rosie is my sister. We can’t even remember how long we’ve known each other. We just know we love and respect each other. We were catching up not long ago, and I told her about the reading at 92NY that we were planning. And she said, “Girl, I’m going to be there front and center!” So, I thought about it, called her back, and asked if she would consider hosting it, and she said, “Of course!” She’s a big reader, she’s a writer herself, and of course she’s a Daughter of Latin America. It’s perfect.

What do you hope audience members who come to this event will take with them after it’s over?

The talent and the joy of the women on the stage. I want them to be lifted, and to understand Latin America and the Caribbean through the experiences of women. When you understand the world through women, you get a full picture of the world, and what needs to be fixed. What these Daughters bring to the world is really good medicine.