Tag LGBTQ

Ruin & Want interview excerpts, pt. 6

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Continuing sharing excerpts from my Sundress Publications interview with Izzy Astuto. This time around, I’m discussing the juxtaposition of sex and violence. As always, it comes back to trauma and T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Same thing really.

Do consider preordering Ruin & Want! 

[CW: talk of violence, sexual abuse.]

Izzy Astuto: Can you speak more on the juxtaposition of sex and violence in this book?

José: What’s that Tolstoy quote? “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s not enough to say I grew up in a dysfunctional family as every family dysfunctions differently. I grew up with the United States version of toxic masculinity fed to me through TV and school, but I also inherited machismo through my family. I was raised by two strong women, my mom and my tia, who through their love and hard work helped keep me alive, and yet, even without the presence of a man in the house, machismo crept through the sexualized, gendered teasing I’d receive and the gendered expectations of what a man should be. That’s the insidious nature of patriarchal violence; we pass it on unintentionally if we’re not careful. 

There’s also the violence of systemic oppression, of growing up below the poverty line, of living with the fear of border patrol, INS, now ICE. I knew I didn’t want to perpetuate toxic stereotypes of the male gaze but more the violence and harm people cause each other through ignorance and despite good intentions (along with bad intentions). There’s also the violence of an eating disorder, a condition of self-harm tinged and/or urged on, in some part, by sexual desire, the need to be attractive. 

I name all this to say that some of what I’m interrogating here is the ways in which sex and violence imply each other. That it’s not a simple thing. The first night L touched me physically didn’t have to happen; and when it did happen, there was the intimacy of sex as well as the intrusion of violence, of crossed lines. I guess I’m saying the book is messy because life is—which is something I don’t want to have to say, mainly because it’s what scholars say to excuse and justify Eliot’s Wasteland, jaja.

More tomorrow!

José

Ruin & Want interview excerpt, pt. 5

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Continuing sharing excerpts from my Sundress Publications interview with Izzy Astuto. Oof. This question had me reflecting on some of the hard truths of writing this project. When I talk about working on myself, it is this interrogation of self and the dismantling of the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal systems that are ingrained in our Western consciousness.

Do consider pre-ordering my book if you’re able and interested in seeing how this work sounds, feels like. Either way, enjoy my rambling route and stay tuned for more!  

Izzy Astuto: Were there any parts of this that felt uniquely difficult to write about?

José: All of it, haha! I mean, what I’ve shared so far about the process of writing this book I hope shows the lengths I was willing to go both in terms of writing craft but also personal growth as well. I knew I had my work cut out for me when my dissertation committee (all white cis-het males) responded to the book by calling it “sexy.” Soon as I heard that response, I realized that I had written it all wrong. My goal hadn’t been to write some Henry Miller-esque text that exalted in toxic heteronormativity, and yet, that was what I had written. Through my formal education, it was all I knew how to write. It was yet another lesson of trusting myself to write from my authentic self rather than some perceived, white idea of literariness.

This has always been the struggle, to write the thing in the way only I can write it. Academia and creative writing are very white spaces. I mean, I’ve shared that my focus for the Ph.D. were Latinx/e poetics and hybrid forms, but I ended up fielding questions about T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the translations of Richard Howard—none of which were on my reading lists or were written about in my exams. I specifically dived into my studies to ground myself in Latinx/e traditions and yet here I was having to talk about the frkn Wasteland and Whitman. That’s what I mean by calling these spaces white. It’s an influence so pervasive that marginalized writers have to actively dismantle and seek out other traditions. 

The other aspect that felt distinctly difficult to write about was my queerness as it relates to my family. Only now that the project is done am I able to see the implications of what I named in this project, specifically the homophobia inherit not just in my family but in Latinx/e culture in general. It’s something I teach about—how Latinidad is an imperfect concept and needs to be regarded as living and in need of critique as well as efforts toward restorative justice for its inherent anti-Blackness and homophobia—but in the same way that I wouldn’t let myself see myself as a survivor, I haven’t been able to see myself as affected by it myself. Only recently have I allowed myself to own my queerness, and with the positive of acceptance necessarily comes the acknowledgment of what kept me from accepting myself. 

More tomorrow!

José