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Wednesday, 12 July 2006
Vamos!
The incontinuity of the event, being - as it is - miraged by pain. Today's wakening was like yesterdays times ten. I ache for the math of it. Jawline electricity, the ripped thud of every beat through a face's tired vessels, the tender gauges in the fleshy gum. I am driven to the pharmacist.
Of course illness has become a theme, has become a urgent comma desperate for the next clause. But this is not illness per se, but pain.
Yesterday in the schoolmaster heat of the Lit & Phil, we verged on a debate between two writers from the Dominican Republic. Diaz with sharp-lined suit and occasional 'fuck' pitted against Valerio-Holguín's deeper, more insistent voice - no contest. As one friend said, Diaz was the charmer, he had the stories of the 'hood, the contact with the youth, the adopted "y'all"s and the swift rise into intellectualism that audiences love. The true loss of the evening was that we rarely heard from Valerio-Holguín and that the two rarely engaged.
Valerio-Holguín's refusal to write in English, his self-imposed economic exile, his demands for reappropriation of the American canon were never explored. I wanted to hear more about distinctions between diaspora and immigration and I wanted further definitions of his violence of alterity. Postcolonialisms for sure, but from a vantage point.
After the lecture, we lost the crowd and avoided the sponsored bus, later spotted from our quiet, unassuming bar parading around town like a gross fairy-lit lemon.
11:14 Posted in Confessional | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this