Marcelo Hernández Castillo's poetry is a lyric exploration into realms that are filled with missing items from unopened trunks, birds circling, and knives that never leave the hand. Marcelo's work is one that leaves me muttering to myself in awe at the painful dance he choreographs across the page. During conversations with Marcelo at CantoMundo in Austin, Texas this summer I found him careful and deliberate when speaking, while sensitive in listening to the voices of others in the room. To have a conversation with Marcelo is to think about the world in new and more delicate ways.
We had this conversation over Google hangout after a long day of work for both us. We each expressed excitement at being able to have this conversation on liminal spaces and Latina/o poetry, and document it. This conversation is part of a series called "Latina/o Poets on Liminal Spaces," you can read my introduction here, a conversation with Javier Zamora here, and a conversation with Erika L. Sánchez here. This has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Natalie Scenters-Zapico: Where do you like to spend more time as a writer, in the metaphorical or literal landscape?
Marcelo Hernández Castillo: Metaphorical. I was thinking a lot about this in Latina/o poetics and how much of it searches to be grounded in the liminal space. The liminal space being a space of transition, as being set aside, or this feeling of being exiled which leads to a state of permanent liminality. But for me it is very difficult to write about something directly. It’s difficult for me to make real allusions to cities, to dates, to people. For me, I’m happiest inside of the lyric. I’m happy inside of that which is non-referential. I like to say something without directly saying it because I find it very difficult to write about the border, or my family’s status, or my evolving status because I’m living it. It’s not something that I have to Wikipedia for facts, or something that I have to see on the news. I mean I see it on the news all the time, but it’s something that’s affecting my family even right now and will continue to keep affecting them. Even if I were to become a citizen eventually, and even if my mom were to become a citizen eventually, my brother, my sister, etc. there will always be somebody else keeping us in that state of liminality. So for me being in the metaphorical, in the figurative, in the lyric, in the ethereal makes sense because I can’t bring myself to write very directly.
To be perfectly honest, it’s really because ever since I was little it’s always been very dangerous for me to write about that. And so, even though now I want to write about when we crossed the border, and my dad being deported twelve years ago, I still have this lingering fear that I shouldn’t write about it. And now I’m in the process after years of being in that state, of facing that fear and pushing myself into that space.
NSZ: And there’s something in that fear of not wanting to be defined by it, but knowing that it is a deep part of you. Perhaps the dilemma is also knowing when something is a part of you and not wanting others to define it for you. In your poem, “Cenzóntle” you write, “Years from now/ there will be a name/ for what you and I are doing” and then later in that same poem you write, “ the bird’s beak twisted/ into a small circle of awe// you called it cutting apart// I called it song.” Is there trauma in existing in a space without a name?
MHC: So here’s the thing, that poem is the last poem in my manuscript, and it brings together a lot of this in between-ness that I’ve been dealing with all of my life. And so, in reading “Betwixt and Between” by Victor Turner I thought of a moment when I first was introduced to the idea of the endemic principle of not being able to name a thing. Though it’s played out in a lot of poems, I like the idea that this existence is unclassifiable from the point of view of a person who is bi-sexual, but who is also married. I’m trying to define for myself a specific kind of Queer identity that isn’t defined as easily as other identities that are Othered by the White supremacist, homophobic society at large. So this not being able to name yet, is what I was working towards in that poem. I don’t know what the speaker, myself, and Ruby have. I don’t have a language for it yet. That’s why in the poem I say, “Years from now there will be a name for what you and I are doing” because I don’t have that language yet.
And in that there’s the idea of invisibility, which as you and Turner have pointed out, being in that state is to be invisible. Which is certainly true in terms of documentation. You’re invisible not only by choice, but also you’re made to be invisible. There is a trauma in being in that state because no matter what you’re always invisible. I just read the essay, “On Finally Being Seen As A Black Woman Writer” by Rachel Eliza Griffith where she says to be seen means that I can’t be unseen anymore. For her, as a black woman, she felt like if you see me once then I can’t just disappear. And, for me, I have to constantly make myself be seen or else there’s a constant disappearance that happens for undocumented communities, and for people negotiating between two very distinct identities. There is a lot of trauma in that. Like I said I want to write about this stuff now, but everything that I had to repress, and everything that I had to act out in order to not be discovered as a kid is now catching up to me. Now I feel like I can’t write about it as much as I try. And that goes into every aspect of life, that trauma manifests itself in your identity: the way you behave in stores, the way you behave in a professional setting with teachers, etc. It becomes this thing that you wonder if you can ever really escape. It just persists and persists.
NSZ: You’re very interested in your poems in what it is to be born, to give birth, and to carry. You write, “While swimming, another doctor/ unscrews another child from you/ and gives it to me.// He is gentle./ He is better than a knife./ Your one good dress/ in my one good hand/ in the only light.// We close our eyes/ and look at each other.” Is the violence of being born a rite of passage into a liminal space?
MHC: Beyond that, not only do you have to be born but you have to be removed, you have to be pulled. For me, there’s this one big word that’s looming over a lot of this conversation and that is origin, and maybe also authenticity. It seems like within this idea of being in a liminal state, there’s also the assumption of coming from perhaps a more stable state, then moving into the liminal space, and then resurfacing as something else. But birth itself doesn’t take us to that space, instead it’s removal, or like you said exile, or being cast away from your origin. So I think a lot of what the Latina/o poets are doing is trying to ground themselves because there’s so much impermanence. Let’s say that you were born here, maybe you don’t have that kind of impermanence, but you do have family and friends who do have that kind of impermanence, and that pulls you in different directions. This idea of impermanence to me is what it’s like being in that state. And so, you want to think that everybody has an idea of origin for themselves, but what about the people who can’t visit their childhood home or country? For many that idea of origin always evades you. So for me, the birth itself isn’t a precursor for the liminal space, there has to be a pull or act of violence into what you and Turner are talking about in this idea of exile from your origin.
NSZ: What about in the idea of giving birth to something?
MHC: For me in giving birth to something, in that specific poem, plays a really important role. Not only because giving birth is seen as fulfilling a specific gender role, but reversing that giving birth puts the person who is delivering in that liminal space.
NSZ: And in your work you seem very interested in this. The idea of giving birth, sometimes we don’t even know to what, but the act of giving birth as an exploration into how that process is to exist in that liminal space. And you access it in this way where, it’s liminal because it’s in conversation with what it means to give birth in archetype. It’s never this one speaker, in this one poem, rather you explore how it is ritual.
MHC: Giving birth is definitely a ritual, one that brings you into something where what came before we can’t be sure of, but after that moment things will never be the same. In the current manuscript I often explore the idea of what it is to exist in this identity that I’m defining for myself. I also think about what it is to bring a human being into this world, given the kind of negotiations that I’m trying to figure out.
NSZ: And if we think about the trauma of giving birth, and the trauma of what it is to move from one state to another, or to be told that you’re going to move, and never fully reaching it, that’s one of the interesting things that your poems accomplish. In your work there’s often that promise that something will be born out of this, but we’re left in that liminal space, we’re left mid-ritual.
MHC: Yeah, I wrote this in my notes before talking to you: When am I going to get there? When am I going to be here?
You’re constantly in this mode of, there’s gonna be something there, there’s gonna be something there, there’s gonna be something there. And then, when am I going to get there? And like I said, even if all of my family got their papers, even if my book got picked up, or whatever, it never feels like I’m actually there. So it becomes like teleology, this system becomes teleology, in that what I am now is less than what is supposedly waiting for me at the end of this transition. Supposedly something after this will help me move away from this rite, out of this transition, into something that is better than where I am now. And sometimes there is, I mean politically you have access to a lot of things. But what if this transition is better than getting to the end? Sometimes people don’t have a choice to stay in that liminal mode, most people wouldn’t want to. But to think of it as what I am now is less than what I will be if I reach that next step is problematic to me. I want to resist that idea that step one, is less than step two, is less than step three, and so on. These binaries that we always build our life around, these binaries of the border, of this and that, I’m trying to resist narratives of binary. Binaries have always told us: man-woman, A-B, all these bifurcated systems, but I want to question that. I want to define something else, that which resists binaries. But, of course, when am I going to get there? I’m always stuck in this transient mode, and it’s complicated. And I don’t think that the work of one person can help us complete that, but we have to begin trying.
NSZ: In thinking about the way in which the trauma of immigrating, or bridging cultural boundaries, and other boundaries, and the way that that affects multiple generations, is immigrating exiling yourself to that liminality?
MHC: Yeah, some of my friends who were born here are still dealing with the same kind of trauma. It is multi-generational. It’s not something that just goes away. I was thinking about this a while ago, with the idea of what does immigration do to the imagination, a panel I tried to put together for AWP, and how does the imagination change once you’ve been removed from a place you can call your birth home. I think that line, that distance, does jettison you into that liminality. And even on a level of race, I think about the way that second generation Irish or Italians have an easier time assimilating, or are allowed to assimilate, because they don’t come from the same history of colonization. So I want to expand that definition to include not only those who immigrate, but also those who immigration affects their lives.
NSZ: So with the idea of liminoid phenomenon, do you feel like you have physical distance to play with liminal experiences? Do you create that space?
MHC: There are similarities between liminoid phenomenon and the idea of duende. The idea of physically having to put yourself in another state of mind, in order to access a super-reality that is removed from logic. This is similar in surrealism, in surrealism you’re trying to access an un-reason, a logic that works on a different scale, a logic that works on different frequencies than we’re used to, and using that to expand our system of knowledge. There’s this great line, in the poem “A Dish of Peaches in Russia” by Wallace Stevens that goes, “With my whole body I taste these peaches,/ I touch them and smell them.” And I always go back to that when I’m thinking about creating these spaces, or entering these spaces, in order to produce something that expands what we know about a thing.
So physically my writing habits change day, night, cafe, my room, but that can’t be possible without reading and communicating with other people. To cultivate that is to build community, especially with other writers of color, or other marginalized voices. You do have to step outside of the superstructure, in order to put two things together that wouldn’t normally be put together. And the distance between them, that’s the image, that’s the good part. Which is probably why I’m really content being in lyric-association, and finding different ways of putting two things together that normally would never be seen together. I like that the space that exists between them is the liminal space.
NSZ: How do you reinvent the narrative of displacement? And how does displacement help to reinvent the insurrection of the superstructures?
MHC: For me it’s always been about authenticity, about always having to prove my authenticity, whether that be on the page, with a social group, proving that I’m well versed in what people expect me to be, you know, well versed in the White Western canon. So the narrative of displacement gets inverted by allowing myself to be against this idea of authenticity, by allowing myself to speak about things that aren’t well grounded in a landscape, in a city, in a very particular situation. But nevertheless I am talking about exile, about immigration, about border politics. I want to allow myself to not rely on other people’s definitions of authenticity in my own work. I want to expand the words that are used to define our own language that destabilizes a very White, hetero-cis superstructure that has existed for a very long time. We can do that in multiple ways, not just in the ways that Amiri Baraka did it, or in politically inclined ways. We have to expand the ways that it can be done. And for me it goes back to that trauma, I can’t write a poem specifically about this state in this time. I’ve had to divert attention away from myself my whole life, try to blend in as much as possible, try not to call too much attention to myself. I think broadening the ways in which we can write against that narrative, against a narrative that’s been given to us, a narrative that is expected of us.
I feel like many times, even in workshop, there’s a specific narrative of displacement that is expected of me and when I don’t fulfill that then that idea of authenticity goes into play. That idea of: He’s not being authentic enough. We have to broaden what we mean by narrative of displacement. I want people to know that just because I’m talking about theme a, b, or c, doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of it.
NSZ: It’s interesting, you keep talking about these ideas of authenticity and complicating that idea. And the idea of expectation, being expected to write about a certain subject matter for a certain audience. I feel like that’s such a constant thing in Latina/o literature, you never feel totally authentic. It’s always interesting to me when I meet writers who I think would never have those kind of authenticity issues, and the more that you engage with either their work as they keep publishing, or as you get to know them on a more personal level those ideas continue. Especially in the U.S., the idea of: I’m more this than you are. So, what is authenticity in Latina/o literature? What does it mean to complicate it?
MHC: Any idea of authenticity has to involve resisting a White narrative, resisting a hetero-normative patriarchy, a narrative that has historically been used against us. But, for me, authenticity doesn’t mean that this poet spent half of his life there, and half of his life here. Or, this poet has more ties to this or that, that has nothing to do with it because it’s all subjective and self-identifying. We have to remove the part of authenticity that is informed by institutions that says this person is more authentic than that person. I think the only reason we have angst of authenticity is because it’s been imposed on us. It doesn’t come from us, it’s been imposed on us, and it’s been internalized by us. So we’re dealing with all of these anxieties not out of our own creation, but because these are the questions we’re always getting from people who aren’t a part of that community. Were it to be just us, everything we write would be authentic. It’s only an issue because the idea of authenticity has been imposed by the dominant white men in the room. So that’s where we need to start, is in that recognition.
But then again we all want jobs. I was talking to someone recently about this and they were saying that to be Latina/o poet, and to be successful means that you’ve been approved by a lot of white gatekeepers, that you fulfill those requirements, you’ve checked off the boxes. So I don’t know how I feel about that. You want to do good for yourself, but then you wonder am I only doing well because I fit into these roles that have been imposed on me? So, I don’t know. It’s complicated.
NSZ: In your Buzzfeed article “Poetry as Passport” you write, “I’ve come to see that as soon as someone talks about Latina/o poetry they immediately make it Other poetry. They see my work as springing from the outside even before reading it. Binaries used to define an aesthetic, such as Latina/o or not, serve only to exclude creative possibilities and emerging voices. It’s wrong to think there only exists one form of Latina/o poetry. People expect me to claim allegiance to something I already belong to, something I already own. I am tired of having to explain myself, and having to show my academic credentials to other writers, and people in general, in order to justify my role in the conversation.” Are we in a system that continually pushes Latina/o poetry into a liminal space? How do words like regional, ethnic, or marginalized further serve to keep us in that space?
MHC: Academic circles and institutions don’t reflect reality. They don’t reflect what is happening in the demographics of the rest of the country. If they did, English departments would look very different than they do right now. And because that is the case, because it doesn’t represent the reality of most major cities, and even many small towns in America, I feel like it’s always going to be seen as Other. But then, how do we fight White supremacy? How do we fight institutionalized forms of racism? And here I’m thinking of things that might prevent one person from getting hired, or another person from getting a book. It’s just the things that are making institutions right now the way they are, and as long as that’s the case then I feel like it might continue. We need more reviews, criticism, critical attention paid to writers of color. And I’m left thinking, because what do you do?
NSZ: Yeah, I mean one of the things that really disturbs me is the idea that there maybe can only be one to two slots for Latina/o voices and then it’s done. Because you know that the White men, who are applying to those same contests, if they see another White man win they’re not thinking, “Well there goes my chance for the next few years.” And it’s a violence in which we are pitted against each other that creates for an ugly landscape, even if those thoughts only ever happen internally. It would be huge if we could just get to a place where two Latina/o writers would win a national prize a couple years in a row and it wouldn’t be seen as a big deal…
MHC:…it wouldn’t be seen as a political…
NSZ: Yeah. And that furthers our liminality, because then we’re in that space not only in our existence but also in the po-biz. What I will say, is that what we’ve been able to create as a Latina/o poetry landscape despite all of that is pretty amazing.
MHC: I want to point out the idea of the default. The idea that when people read a book, in their heads the race of the people is White. So when you have two White writers win a national prize two years in a row, or ten years in a row, it’s never seen as odd because it falls into people’s idea of the default. And so, if the default starts being that writers of color are getting reviews, prizes, jobs that would be challenging for many White poets. But that default is something we have to question. When there’s three White, male poets winning the same prize every year we have to question that. To voice these issues is the beginning of that change.
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Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and crossed the U.S/Mexico border through Tijuana at the age of five. He is a Canto Mundo fellow, and the first undocumented student to graduate from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. He teaches summers as the resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. His poems and essays can be found in Huizache, Indiana Review, New England Review, The Paris American, and Southern Humanities Review among others. With Javier Zamora and Christopher Soto, he initiated the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country.
