“Mexican Heaven” Poetry didn’t ease Discrimination, but eased Loneliness. Interview with José Olivarez

José Guadalupe Olivarez is a Mexican American poet born in Chicago in 1988. His parents were born in Cañadas de Obregón, Jalisco, and migrated to the United States in 1987 when his father got a job in the steel industry. After ten years, his father became a U. S. citizen, while his mother obtained lawful permanent residence. In his poetry, José Olivarez challenges the stigmatized ways that Mexican American identities and experiences are often portrayed. He uses irony to comment on the absurd duality of the concept of citizenship and explores the ambiguity of the identification processes while through love and empathy, his poetry offers a scathing critique of a nation that still questions the humanity of those who built it. In this sense, José Olivarez’s poetry provides new resources for the collective interpretation of the hermeneutic gaps in how Mexican American identities are interpreted and understood.

Jose Olivarez made his poetry debut in 2018 with Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books). In 2020, he collaborated with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo to edit the book LatiNext, the fourth volume in The BreakBeat Poets series (Haymarket Books) that redefines the Latin American experience through poetry. Three years later, in 2023, he released his second book, Promises of Gold (Henry Holt and Company) in a new bilingual edition featuring a Spanish translation by David Ruano González.

On June 19, 2020, we had the opportunity to interview Jose Olivarez, who kindly agreed to conduct the conversation in Spanish. In the excerpts reproduced below, we strived to capture the colloquial nature of his language, including any distinctive grammatical variation that can arise from the infrequent use of the language. When these speech licenses hinder comprehension, we have edited their syntaxis without modifying the semantics. Fragments of the referenced poems were thoughtfully included to enrich this text.

Alejandro Mosqueda and Camelia Tigau: Have you ever thought of living in Mexico?
José Olivarez: That’s a huge question, a tough one… You know, when I was sixteen, I had this idea that the reason I wasn’t… How do you say it? Doing well in the U.S., that I couldn’t find my place, was because I didn’t belong there. I thought my parents were wrong when they moved to the United States. I felt like… If I were to move back to Mexico with my grandparents, in Cañadas de Obregón, everything would be easier. No one would ask me… They wouldn’t ask where I come from, or the reason behind my name, or how my name is pronounced, or why I was named Guadalupe, a girl’s name, right? In Mexico those questions wouldn’t come up. So, when I was 16, my parents sent me to Mexico to spend the holidays with my grandparents and my plan was that I wouldn’t come back to the United States, I would stay. I would’ve started high school there in Mexico and there I was going to remain. My grandparents love me, they treat me very well. But then I started wandering the streets and the people I met, they’d ask me, What are you doing here? And they kept saying I wasn’t Mexican, you know? They told me I was American, not from Cañadas. It didn’t matter that Mamá Jacinta lived there in a house with Papá Miguel. That experience really messed me up… in the States we’d say it left me heartbroken, you know? It hurt so bad because I was completely sure that was where I belonged. But when that happened, I was left alone with all these questions. If I don’t fit in the U. S. and I don’t fit in Mexico either, then where do I do? Where’s my place? My home? Where can I feel relaxed and exist without any pain or struggle? Where can I feel complete? It wasn’t until years later, I think when I started reading more Latin writers, that I realized I could build a home anywhere, I could take everything I love about Mexican culture and everything I love about American culture, the Chicago culture I grew up in, and then create my own space, my own house in those places.

Interview
[…]
where is your home?
I went to México & no one recognized me.
where is your home?
I went to México & everyone was my cousin.
[…]
AM and CT: At what age did you start becoming conscious of your identity? Conscious of being different from others?
JO: When I was four, I went with my mom to sign up for school. The people there, I think they were administrators, told me that no one at the school spoke Spanish and they couldn’t help me, so there was no place for me in the school. A year later, when I was five, my mother took me back there again. The principal told us the same thing—there was no way they could help me. As I didn’t speak English, they made me promise to learn the language like all the other kids. But no other kid that age had to have that kind of dialogue, you know? And as I had started to learn some words in English, I had to translate everything for my mom. That’s when I understood why I was in the principal’s office and that I was different from the other kids. But it wasn’t just that I was different, but something that didn’t have the same value as English, you know? And I was entering school from a lower spot than the other students.

AM and CT: How often have you experienced discrimination as a Mexican American, both in the past and in other schools you’ve attended?
JO: Well, when we’re kids, we don’t understand everything, as we do when we grow up, right? One thing that sticks out in my memory is when my mom packed my lunch for school. Sometimes it would be beans and carne asada, or whatever, and the other kids would ask why my food smelled like that, you know? In the moment, it’s not like they meant any harm, but back then I couldn’t always differentiate between a simple observation or a mean comment. I mean, I went through a lot of moments like that, where I couldn’t figure out if they came with a bad intention. But what really got to me for a long time was feeling ashamed of being Mexican, you know? It was as if I had to hide parts of my culture, of my language, of my country and my parents. And sometimes that was the reality. My parents were… How do you call it in Spanish? Indocumentados. That had to stay a secret, You couldn’t just go around telling everyone. Moments like that were tough. And then I went to study in Harvard, and I was told I was only there because of the Affirmative Action program. They were basically saying I didn’t deserve a place there, that I was there just to fill a quota for Mexican people or whatever. So there are little things like those.

River Oaks Mall
it’s hard to hold onto a secret
whether or not anyone is looking.
when the girl i have a crush on asks

why i keep looking at her, i say it’s not
like i like you, gosh. denial is
one of the best ways to confess.

when the teacher asks who brought beans
for lunch, i blame it on the boy next to me.
i bite my tongue when my stomach protests.

trying too hard is another way to confess.
my family takes a Saturday stroll
through the mall dressed in church clothes.

every other kid in jeans, t-shirt, & Jordans.
fun fact: when you have to try to blend in
you can never blend in. my dad gives me a penny

to throw into a fountain that makes dreams
come true. all my dreams except one.
my family trying so hard to be American

it was transparent.
AM and CT: Do you feel the American way of thinking is discriminatory?
JO: What I see about the United States is that they really dig other cultures. I mean, here everyone loves tacos, Mexican music—you can go to a banda or ranchera concert, or whatever. But that doesn’t mean that Americans actually like Mexican people, the Mexican community. They still want us to have no rights or just the bare minimum. But the problem isn’t just cultural, the U. S. government is like super capitalist, right? The problem with that is they need workers who’ll work a lot for very low pay, they want people working hard for very little in exchange. For a long time, the U. S. has relied on workers… How can I put it? Before Latin American workers, they had Asian workers building trains and all that. And even before that, they had slaves. That’s what I see: discrimination in the U. S. isn’t just cultural, because they love culture here. When I was in college there was something that really pissed me off. There were plenty of students who spoke Spanish perfectly, they nailed all the dances, knew every Mexican dance. For a long time, I had to keep that part of my culture hidden. Now in college, it was a trend, but For them it was just entertainment, like a vacation thing. […] After I graduated, I got fired from my second job. […] And for a long time, instead of… Well, I didn’t know you could just speak up and say Hey, that’s discrimination! You don’t want to come off as causing problems, you don’t want to show yourself as an angry guy, and you don’t want to feel as if everything is constantly beyond your control.

And that’s the other thing. Discrimination can really make you feel you’re crazy. If I mentioned I was having a good day, they’d think I was making fun of them. I mean, it didn’t matter what I said, they always twisted it. You end up ignoring if the sky was blue or green: if you see the sky is blue but everyone insists it’s green… That’s the second thing.

And the third: while growing up, my parents would tell me we had an opportunity here in the States, and that they made big sacrifices to be here, you know? My siblings and I, we worked really hard to go to college. But in the end, my parents would still be unemployed, with no health insurance and no savings. So, to me, discrimination is also something related to capital, you know? We did everything the way they told us it had to be done but ended up with nothing. We always had to work a lot to earn something that, at the end of the day is not much, you know?

Wealth
after Lucille Clifton

wealth. don’t talk to me about wealth.
when i got into Harvard my guys joked

it was to mow the lawms. i laughed until
i met my roommates & they offered me

a broom. if i accepted the broom & beat
the cobwebs out of their heads do you think

i’d forget? now i make poems in languages
they can’t register. you feel me. in every poem

i hide garden shears. invitations to banquets & they
still don’t spell my name right. apologies. when they say

josé, the only people to turn their heads are me
& the janitors. line cooks. waitstaff. yes, landscapers.

josé el poeta y josé the gardener: each of us biting
our tongues. trying to make beauty grow. from soil

covering bones. barely. under the surface.
AM and CT: Do your parents read your poems, José? Do they like them?
JO: Well, yeah, my parents come to my shows now and then. They don’t understand everything I read, but they are very proud of me. When my first book came out, we had a release party for it at the National Museum of Mexican Arts in Chicago and they came and sat in the front row, and the director greeted them. Then they started signing the books like they were the authors. So, they are very proud, but don’t fully understand what I write. I talk to them about my work and try to explain the themes of my poems. But no, my mom can’t read English, so it’s tough.

AM and CT: When did you start writing poetry?
JO: I started writing poetry in high school, after I went to a show called Poetry Slam. That was the first time I saw teenagers like me talking about their lives. I’ve always loved reading, but it wasn’t until then that I realized that we could also be writers, that we could create books, you know? So, I started writing in high school.

AM and CT: Do you think poetry provides a way for Asian, African American and Mexican American communities to engage in their identity formation processes, beyond the stigmatized roles often perpetuated about them in society?
JO: I do. And I think it’s an opportunity to come together and start realizing there is nothing wrong with their culture, that all cultures are good, and people should not feel ashamed of who they are. […] I hope these communities can unite through poetry workshops and can write poetry for themselves, not just to explain their culture to others, you know? There is kind of an expectation in this country that we must explain our culture to everyone else, see? But I want my students to realize they can write poems about their cultures for other Latin Americans, for their Asian and African American friends too. That they don’t have to be always explaining everything they do. They can just celebrate their culture without explaining everything.

Mexican Heaven
[…]
St. Peter lets Mexicans into heaven
but only to work in the kitchens.
a Mexican dishwasher polishes the crystal,
smells the meals, & hears the music.
they dream of another heaven,
one they might be allowed in
if only they work hard enough.
*
there are white people in heaven, too.
they build condos across the street
& ask the Mexican to speak English.
i’m just kidding.
there are no white people in heaven
[…]
AM and CT: Regarding LatiNext, the book you edited with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo, what significance do you see in compiling and diffusing poems that express diverse narratives around Latin American identities in the United States?
JO: One reason is that when I was a student at school we didn’t read books by Latinext authors. I just didn’t know that Latin America had such a rich tradition of literature and writers. When I was in high school, I never read anything by Sandra Cisneros. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, I just had no idea she was an author, you know? When I began reading books and poems by Latino writers it was just a magical experience. I felt that for the first time I could see someone in the mirror. I felt connected again, you know? I felt like it wasn’t just me, but rather a vast world of tradition. So, that’s the first reason. I hope students get a chance to read this book and discover poems they enjoy, so they can explore more work by Latin American poets that resonate with them. Another important aspect for me is the often-overlooked history of Latin American communities in the United States. If we were to walk around here and ask people who are the Latinext, who are the Latin people? many might label them as immigrants, Mexicanas or even associate them with… what do they call them? Mobsters, gangsters. But Latin American people are so many different things, beyond being Mexican. Mexican, Honduran, Panamanian, and Salvadoran people have much in common but are also different in a lot of ways. So, I hope that when a student from Guatemala reads this book, they can find a poem in which they find solace, something that speaks to them. Because that can help them understand they are part of a community, I think that’s very important. And for non-Latin American people, I want them to understand that Latino identity is no small thing. It’s huge, you know? There are so many ways to be Latin.

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