Recently, I decided I wanted to re-read Carolyn Forché's book of poetry The Country Between Us. I first read it a few years ago for a Creative Writing class, and wanted to revisit it because I didn't remember much about it, and I just generally need to punctuate my typically fiction-centric reading with poetry, whether it's just going back to my favorite collections and reading a few poems or (re)reading a full collection.
The Country Between Us is partly about Forché's time working as a journalist in El Salvador as it was on the cusp of a civil war in the 70s. Poems about unrest in El Salvador between its people and leaders are told along with poems about the unrest and distance between two lovers. With this book, Forché is renowned for her weaving of the 'personal' and the 'political,' which is a popular topic in literary criticism. When we talk about the personal and the political in a text, we are acknowledging that there is not as a neat a distinction as we'd like between our personal lives, even our subjectivity, and the larger world - we are saying that maybe the sensibilities or function of the two are not so different. And in the case of Forché's book, we can say that the way the personal and political function are as metaphors of each other: the political situation in El Salvador can be a metaphor for the relationship between the lovers, and vice versa. It is also good to note that Forché is known for coining the term 'poetry of witness,' meaning that poetry is necessary in dealing with things such as war and conflict, and that it is a tool for social justice.
This book is beautiful. Because it is pretty short - just 59 pages - I decided to read it out loud to myself over the course of a few days, to really savor the language and imagery. I loved reading this book, and think it definitely warrants your attention. But one thing preoccupied my reading: Forché is a white woman writing about El Salvador, and she may be one of the most known voices on the Salvadoran Civil War. Even on the back of book, there is a blurb that says,
This praise is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to say that Latin America needs a voice that is not their own, that Latin America needs the voice of a white person from the U.S. Latin America has plenty of voices, it is up to us whether or not we listen to those voices, whether we support them and give them a platform to be heard. This is not to say that Forché is not allowed to write about El Salvador because she is not from there, or that these poems are not good because she is not from El Salvador. It is that Forché should not be considered an authority, which is what the above blurb suggests. No one author should ever be looked at as an authority on a subject - people and events are too complicated to look to one person or one perspective. Each of us has a certain amount of privilege and gaps in our understandings, which is why it is so crucial read widely and diversely. In this blurb, we can see Forché's privilege of being considered an authority on something she does not actually have authority over. And while this book is certainly beautiful and important, it does not make it the authoritative poetic text on El Salvador, or Latin America.
Read widely, read diversely, read critically, read skeptically. Some may think that reading in these ways reduces the experience of reading, but I think it enhances it, and it pushes me to read new books to love.
This book is beautiful. Because it is pretty short - just 59 pages - I decided to read it out loud to myself over the course of a few days, to really savor the language and imagery. I loved reading this book, and think it definitely warrants your attention. But one thing preoccupied my reading: Forché is a white woman writing about El Salvador, and she may be one of the most known voices on the Salvadoran Civil War. Even on the back of book, there is a blurb that says,
'Latin America needs a poet to replace the man who represented in his writings the beauty, sufferings, fears and dreams of this continent: Pablo Neruda. Carolyn Forché is that voice.' -Jacobo Timerman
This praise is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to say that Latin America needs a voice that is not their own, that Latin America needs the voice of a white person from the U.S. Latin America has plenty of voices, it is up to us whether or not we listen to those voices, whether we support them and give them a platform to be heard. This is not to say that Forché is not allowed to write about El Salvador because she is not from there, or that these poems are not good because she is not from El Salvador. It is that Forché should not be considered an authority, which is what the above blurb suggests. No one author should ever be looked at as an authority on a subject - people and events are too complicated to look to one person or one perspective. Each of us has a certain amount of privilege and gaps in our understandings, which is why it is so crucial read widely and diversely. In this blurb, we can see Forché's privilege of being considered an authority on something she does not actually have authority over. And while this book is certainly beautiful and important, it does not make it the authoritative poetic text on El Salvador, or Latin America.
Read widely, read diversely, read critically, read skeptically. Some may think that reading in these ways reduces the experience of reading, but I think it enhances it, and it pushes me to read new books to love.
No comments:
Post a Comment