Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed…today we’re continuing our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month by revisiting my 2021 interview with novelist Marisel Vera.

Marisel Vera:  I have always been a storyteller because my mother was a storyteller.  My mother was always telling me stories about growing up on a mountain in Puerto Rico.  She would talk about the spirits that roamed in the mountains and how she didn't believe in them because the church said not to, but yet she would tell these stories, and other people would tell these stories, and I was always a child that listened to stories. So I think that just from the very beginning my life has been shaped by stories and storytellers.

Jo Reed: You just heard author Marisel Vera. I wanted to revisit my interview with not just for Hispanic Heritage month but also as Puerto Rico is assessing the wide-spread damage recently inflicted by Hurricane Fiona, her historical novel “The Taste of Sugar” is sadly current.  Marisel’s novel pivots on another devastating hurricane that ravaged the island at the end of the 19th century within a year of American colonization. “The Taste of Sugar” centers on the lives of a couple, Valentina Sanchez and Vicente Vega small coffee farmers in the hills of Puerto Rico.  The confluence of these external events causes the couple to lose their farm and join 5,000 other Puerto Ricans on an arduous journey to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations. Lured there by the promise of a prosperity in return for hard work, they soon find themselves captive laborers in a strange land.  “The Taste of Sugar” is a compelling and eye-opening epic story, and yet, a deeply intimate one that traces the transformation of Valentina and Vicente as they mature and grow and their relationship evolves and strengthens. Here’s Marisel Vera to tell us more about her protagonists.

Marisel Vera:  Well Valentina and Vicente meet when they're both very young, Valentina is 17, not even 18, and she comes from the town of Ponce in the south of Puerto Rico, and it's a very cosmopolitan town, and she has certain advantages, she's middle class, she's always dreamed of having some of the advantages that her friend Dalia had, going to Spain and Paris, and beautiful clothes, and Vicente comes from the mountain in Utuado, his father is a coffee farmer.  So when they meet they come from very different lives but they have a connection, even though he's pretty honest when he meets her and tells her, "No, you know, I'm a coffee farmer, but we don't have that kind of money."

Jo Reed:  Yeah.  It's very interesting in how she grows tremendously from a silly little girl to someone who can just face anything and do it with dignity.

Marisel Vera:  Yeah.  I thought of her as many of the women in my family who have high dreams and had to endure very hard times because that was their lives.  So I hope that she would grow up to be strong, and she did, and I knew that she would because she had to, she had to.

Jo Reed:  What inspired the book, Marisel?  I'm curious how you began.  Was it with the history or was it with characters?

Marisel Vera:  I always begin writing with something I want to say, and then I think about who will tell my story.  So when I learned about these 5,000 Puerto Ricans going to Hawaii in 1900 to 1903 to work in the sugar plantations I thought, "Oh my god, what was happening in Puerto Rico that Puerto Ricans would leave their home during that time before plane travel and go so far, and did they ever come back?"  So that's what I wanted to talk about, and then I thought, "Okay, who's going to tell my story?"  And I always want to have a woman telling the story, and because of the period that the novel's set in I knew that I had to have a man because their lives would be so different, and I was lucky that I was able to place Vicente in Utuado growing coffee because that's where my own ancestors came from, and for me if I could somehow place my characters where my ancestors were it's a gift that I give to myself because while I learn about their lives I can imagine my own ancestor's lives, and while I was working on "The Taste of Sugar" about the Puerto Ricans who went to Hawaii I learned so much history, I learned that it was the first exodus sponsored really by the governments of Puerto Ricans to get them off the island because there's no work, they lost their land, and better to get rid of these people, they're a nuisance, and have them go somewhere else where their labor is needed.  So through this story and through this history that I learned, I understood that the novel wasn't just about this first exodus of Puerto Ricans having to go to Hawaii and losing their land, but I learned that this novel was really about colonialism, Spanish colonialism, 400 years of it, and the beginning of U.S. colonialism.

Jo Reed:  Well, as you mentioned you tell the story from multiple perspectives. We see the world through Valentina’s eyes sometimes, through Vicente’s eyes, sometimes we have letters between Valentina and her sister Elena, and then there are moments of omniscient narrator who’s describing events. How did the structure come together for you?

Marisel Vera:  I think of it as really just I was creating a world, I was creating a Puerto Rican world of the period, and also a world with diverse characters because unless you're Puerto Rican I don't feel like the reader would know the Puerto Rican culture or Puerto Rican characters or the Puerto Rican world.  So I looked at it like that, and I knew that it had to be peopled with all these various characters to give the reader a really full feeling for the world.  Basically I love being a novelist because I get to be the creator, like God, and that is just a fantastic, thrilling feeling that I could just create from nothing these characters, and some things were very intentional like the letters, the letters are really important between Valentina and Elena because I needed to send Elena to San Juan because I wanted her to inform the reader when she informed Valentina about what was happening in San Juan.  I didn't want to write actual scenes or chapters about certain things, but I wanted it to come through in the letters.  Like for example when Elena wrote Valentina about the bombing of San Juan I wanted to write it her saying it in this letter so that the reader could know what she felt when this was happening.

Jo Reed:  This novel is about a lot.  Do you outline?  Do you know the story you want to tell?  I mean you have the idea, but do you know where the story's going to go before you sit down and actually write it?

Marisel Vera:  No, no.  I always try to outline but it so boring-- I think it's boring. <laughs> Yes, plus I feel like if I outline then I already predestine my characters, and I don't want to do that, I want them to take me where they need to go on their journey, I want to be along with them on their journey, so that's my process, and it's a problem when it comes to structuring the novel because in the middle of the novel they're on a boat going to Hawaii, and that's the first thing that came to me when I was writing, and that's the middle.  So it's always a problem when I go back trying to figure out, okay, how should I tell this story?  But I like letting my characters lead me where they need to go, and also people always show up in my books, unexpected people.  I could be writing about Valentina today, and then next thing I know she has a cousin that came to tell her story or something, and it's just so fun to have all these people just show up, and then when I'm writing them, they're telling me their story, I'm listening, and I'm writing it, it's a joy, it's a joy.

Jo Reed:  Oh, it sounds like it is.  Can you tell me a little bit about the research process because that had to have been formidable.

Marisel Vera:  Oh yes, especially when I really started working on the novel I would say it was around 2012, I worked on it a little bit 2011, and with the research, but when I really started deep into writing it and thinking about it, it was 2012, and by that time-- and I had already amassed like a copy of all the newspaper articles from Hawaii from 1900 to 1903 that mentioned the words Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricans.  So that was really helpful because I learned about how Americans in Hawaii thought about Puerto Ricans even before they came.  Another thing was a friend of mine, a professor, one of her students, she wrote to the University of Puerto Rico and got a copy of this book that was printed in 1899, and I wasn't able to request it from any other library because I think they're the only ones that had it.  So somehow she got it. It had a report from every mayor in every town in Puerto Rico, like 72 towns or something, about what happened after hurricane San Ciriaco.  So they all were required by the U.S. government to give a report of how many houses were destroyed, how many people died, and so these mayors-- they wrote details about what happened after Hurricane San Ciriaco, and that was really helpful to me when I was trying to create the scenes of the hurricane to make it real. I read nonfiction memoirs in Spanish and English, newspaper articles in Spanish, of that period in Puerto Rico there were a lot of newspapers, and it was really helpful for me to get a feel for the way people lived, the way people thought during that period.  So it was just a treasure trove because I don't just write about the facts, but I try to also have the language, the rhythm of the language of the period and how people talked, and that is helpful to me also when I write, to get their voices and also the music of the period.  I also come from a strong Puerto Rican family where a lot of Spanish was spoken and is spoken, and even as a small child I was always listening to the rhythm of the way people talk, because you can tell so much by the way people talk and the rhythm of their voices, and I want to distinguish my characters by using rhythm in their voices so that I don't have to say their names before the readers start reading about them, they might know who they are, and that's a big challenge let me tell you, but one that I take on. <laughs>

Jo Reed:  Well the language also pivots into Spanish, and you don't provide translations, and I have no Spanish, but I found I could figure it out and when I couldn't I just looked up the words which is easy <laughs>.  So that had to have been a decision though to do that.

Marisel Vera:  Yes.  Yeah.

Jo Reed:  Walk me through that.  Is that about having that rhythm of language that you were just referring to?

Marisel Vera:  Yes, and I think that I felt more confident in this second novel, "The Taste of Sugar" than I did in my first novel. I live in two languages so I felt more comfortable embracing that in my writing, but writing is such a way hopefully that my reader, like you said, you got the gist of it, and if you didn't you looked it up, and so I really embraced my Puerto Rican-ness, and my Puerto Rican gaze in "The Taste of Sugar," and going forward I'm going to do that, and I know I've had a lot of complaints from some people about the Spanish, but you know what?  This is my voice, and this is the way I'm going to write from now on and, you know, so be it.

Jo Reed:  Well the other thing you certainly explore in the book, you make it clear that this is a man's world.

Marisel Vera:  Yes.

Jo Reed:  The women are not passive, but they have to move very carefully. You just thread these needles so well, showing and demonstrating an exploitation of people, but at the same time they're not just victims, wherever they can have agency they grab it.

Marisel Vera:  Yes.  Well I don't see my characters as characters, I see them as people, and I think when you see your characters as people you understand that they're complicated, maybe not completely evil, or completely good the way people really are, and so that is the way I write them.  I write them as real people, what would their passions be, how could they work in this world?  I know with Valentina I understood the male Puerto Rican world very, very well because I grew up in that world in Chicago.  I was born in Chicago, raised in Chicago, but my parents were Puerto Ricans, and I always joked around like they raised their four daughters like we were back on the mountain in the 1950's in Puerto Rico, and it was tough, but I know that it was hard for my mother who grew up a mountain-- she didn't like living on a mountain, just like Valentina. So I think about my characters as real people, and that is what makes them real to the reader.

Jo Reed:  And you also are very clear about the very casual racism.

Marisel Vera:  Yes.  That is something that is still going on in Puerto Rico today, and I wanted to address that because some Puerto Ricans like to say that Puerto Rico isn't racist, and no, that's not true, and also my colorism is a deal, you are complimented on the color of your skin often, if your hair is straight, and I wanted to put that in there because it's part of our culture, it's part of our history, and I feel that we have to recognize it in order to change it.

Jo Reed:  Yeah, that's exactly right.  And you do it in the same way you talk about colonialism and about colorism or sexism, it's not didactic, it's through the lives of these characters in the book and how it resonates and what they go through on a daily basis, just what their lives are on a daily basis, and nobody's stopping to say, "Hey, men are always in charge."  Men are just always in charge.

Marisel Vera:  Yes, yes, like with Valentina, when she is wondering, "Should I tell my husband this thing?" 

Jo Reed:  And this thing is an unwanted sexual overture from someone.

Marisel Vera:  Yes.  And she's wondering, okay, what are the consequences if she tells him, somehow she'll have to pay for it, most likely-- she thinks most likely she will. Women are put in a position where anything that is bad that happens to them could be their fault because they did this, they didn't do that, and I think that when you tell stories like this people get it, people get things when you tell it in a story that compared to when you read it as a nonfiction fact, because people really care about other people, especially one-on-one.  Just like when I thought about, okay, the story about 5,000 Puerto Ricans I thought, "Nobody's going to care really about 5,000 Puerto Ricans."  They're going to think, "Wow, 5,000 Puerto Ricans, that's a lot of Puerto Ricans."  But if you can tell the story through the viewpoint of this couple who have to give up everything, for Vicente who has to give up his dream of being a coffee farmer, the thing he wants more than anything in his life, and he has to give it up because of what's happening in his country, then people care that Vicente had to give up his dream, and they care that Valentina doesn't feel comfortable about telling something that she would like to tell her husband.

Jo Reed:  The hurricane, San Ciriaco in 1899, bears uncanny echoes to Hurricane Maria, but I know you wrote this way before Hurricane Maria, but it still must have been shocking to you-- I mean as it was shocking to all of us-- but you having written this about something that happened over 100 years ago, and you're seeing mirrored today.

Marisel Vera:  Yes, I went around saying, "Oh my god,"   it's just like Hurricane San Ciriaco.  It was unbelievable, and Hurricane Maria ripped up the coffee trees, and in the same area as Hurricane San Ciriaco.  It was just something.  One of my uncles lives in Utuado right now in the area that Hurricane Maria devastated, and Hurricane San Ciriaco over a hundred years ago, and it was just something, you know, another aunt they didn't have water, they didn't have electricity, one of my aunts didn't have water for seven or eight months, and the way that the United States government was so slow to help Puerto Rico, just kind of mirrored some of the telegrams and the letters that I read from the charity board that was in charge of sending food or giving food to Puerto Rico in 1899.  One of the last telegrams that this major got, he was in Puerto Rico, and he was in charge of the food that was coming and where it was going was that, you know, "It's been a year already, by the end of October no more food because it's not our job to feed Puerto Ricans."

Jo Reed:  In many books the hurricane would have been the culmination of the story, or it would have been the force to get the story moving.  In "The Taste of Sugar" it comes in the middle to set the second part of the book into motion. 

Marisel Vera:  Well I knew that I had to write about the U.S. invading Puerto Rico in 1898 because these two events were what caused the exodus to Hawaii, it wasn't just Hurricane San Ciriaco.  The first part of it was the U.S. invasion, 1898, they come in, the U.S. government devalues the Puerto Rican peso by 40 percent, and they changed the taxes so now there are property taxes, and before there weren't property taxes, before people were taxed on their labor.  So these two big things and other changes that the Puerto Rican government made including buying up the land, once the Puerto Rican farmers lost it, very cheap and selling it to like corporations.  So they buy up the land, and then there's this hurricane, and so more people lose their property, and these two events are what caused the first exodus of people going to Hawaii.  So I needed to write about that, and I wanted to write before the U.S. invasion because I also wanted to write about Spanish colonialism because Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony for 400 years. 

Jo Reed:  It is an epic as I said when we started this conversation, and the book also just evokes the sheer physical beauty of Puerto Rico, its lushness.  There were moments where I felt like could smell the air as I was reading it.

Marisel Vera:  You know, I said before, I was born in Chicago, and my father worked in a factory, and there were six kids.  So unlike some other Puerto Ricans we didn't get to go back to Puerto Rico every year to visit the family, but when I was 18, and my sister was 17, we saved from our afterschool summer jobs so that we could go to Puerto Rico for the first time because my parents always talked about it, and our relatives, and I had this image in my head about how Puerto Rico looked, and I was always very, very connected to the Puerto Rican culture, you know, with the music, everything, I loved it from my very, very beginning of knowing myself as a person, and so we fly to Puerto Rico right after I graduated from high school, and the moment I stepped off the tarmac, I felt this connection with Puerto Rico.  I looked and there were the palm trees, and then later on I went to where my parents grew up in the mountains in the country, and I just feel like these are my roots, it's calling me, and I could just close my eyes right now and describe the feeling that Vicente felt because that's how I felt just looking at the palm trees.

Jo Reed: Tell me about growing up in Chicago….was there a strong Puerto Rican community there?

Marisel Vera:  Oh yeah, I grew up in the Humboldt Park, and that was Puerto Rican community.  In fact right now the governor of Illinois signed a bill, so this two-mile area of Humboldt called Paseo Boricua from Western and Costner is going to be called Puerto Rico town.  So yes.

Jo Reed:  How cool.

Marisel Vera:  A very, very strong connection to Puerto Rico.  Chicago is the town that during the 1950's there was a big exodus of Puerto Ricans, Operation Bootstrap was the name of the program, monosolaobra [ph?], and they came to Chicago to work in the factories, and my father came during that period, my mother came a few years later.  So yes, Chicago has a very strong Puerto Rican community, very vibrant.

Jo Reed:  So Chicago really felt like home. You didn’t feel like an outsider.

Marisel Vera:  Oh no.  I mean yes, now I can, but when I was growing up it was very difficult growing up Puerto Rican in Chicago because you really didn't belong, people didn't want you here who weren't Puerto Rican.  You lived in two cultures.  You were not Puerto Rican enough at home, not American enough out.  So it was very difficult, very difficult for a teenager.  You're already, you know, please, mixed up or insecure as a teenager, and then you grow up in two cultures, and very hard for my sisters and me as Puerto Rican girls because my parents were so strict, and they raised us like we were growing up in Puerto Rico.  So that was a challenge growing up in the late 70's.    And one of the reasons that I wrote "The Taste of Sugar," and it was so important to me as I was writing, I realized that it wasn't just a story about the history of Puerto Rico and these Puerto Ricans who went to Hawaii, but it was sort of like a discovery of my roots, my Puerto Rican roots.  It was a chance for me to claim being Puerto Rican, and a gift that I thought would be not just to myself but to my peers, my sisters, Puerto Ricans like me who didn't know our history, because this is what happens when you grow up belonging to a colony, your own history of your own ancestors is not taught.  The history that's taught is the one of the colonizer.   So my parents didn't know their own history. And I know that I'm achieving my goal of having this novel "The Taste of Sugar" be a celebration of us Puerto Ricans and the Puerto Rican culture because Puerto Ricans are telling me so.  And people thank me for writing this novel, and I knew it was necessary because I needed it for me, and as a reader I was always a great reader from a very small child, I looked for myself in books.  I mean you don't need to find yourself in books, but it would be nice if you found at least one book where you saw yourself, and when you don't see yourself you feel that erasure of not being seen, you're not seen, and people are telling me that for the first time in their lives they feel seen.

Jo Reed:  And that's so important because god knows we read for many reasons and one is to learn about other people and people who are different from us, but boy it's so important to see yourself reflected in books too, especially when you're young.  I wonder if you think a writer of an historical novel has a particular set of obligations to the reader?

Marisel Vera:  Well I know that I felt it when I wrote "The Taste of Sugar" and that is why I was meticulous in my research.  I felt it because I knew this was going to be the first time that a lot of people learned about Puerto Rico, the first time that a lot of Puerto Ricans would learn their own history especially Puerto Ricans reading in the English language or raised in the United States like I was, and I was meticulous, and I have to say that since the publication I have had Puerto Rican historians reach out to me and tell me, "Oh my god, how did you do it?  How did you get all this history in, and it's accurate?  How were you able to do it in a story?"  So yes, for me, I had this need to be correct.

Jo Reed:  And you produced a novel with a bibliography.

Marisel Vera:  Yes, and that's just a small one of all the things, and you know why I did it?  I know it wasn't necessary in fiction, but I wanted to give credit and also a little bit of shine to some of the books and some of the articles that really helped me, but you don't know how many books or articles I read, and I couldn't write it down because if I kept track then I wouldn't be able to write a novel because <laughs> that takes time.

Jo Reed:  You'd be doing footnotes all the time.

Marisel Vera:  Yes, and you know that's not my thing.  I'm a novelist, but if your book really helped me I want to honor it.

Jo Reed:  "The Taste of Sugar" came out during the pandemic, which had to have an impact on the way it was presented, the way it was rolled out. 

Marisel Vera:  Oh my god, it was bought in 2019 I think it was in April or something, and in July my editor gave me feedback, and it needed to be in by a certain time, because they wanted it to be published before the presidential election.  They thought that I wasn't going to get a lot of exposure because everything was going to be about the presidential election, and I was going on vacation with my sisters to Italy.  I'm like, "I'm going on vacation with my sisters for two weeks.”    But so I took it with me, I printed it, and I took it with me, I worked on it on the plane. And then there's a pandemic, and it's like, "Oh my god," but they decided to go forward, and no physical events, and what I decided to do was to use my advance to hire a personal publicist because I knew if people don't read your book, forget it.  That happened with my first novel, nobody read it, I don't think anybody reviewed it, but I was really lucky that some really important people read my novel and gave me really great reviews, so I'm blessed, no complaints.

Jo Reed:  Finally, tell me how story-telling has shaped your life.

Marisel Vera:  I have always been a storyteller because my mother was a storyteller.  My mother was always telling me stories about growing up on a mountain in Puerto Rico, She would talk about the spirits that roamed in the mountains and how she didn't believe in them because the church said not to, but yet she would tell these stories, and I was always a child that listened to stories.  So I am totally shaped by storytelling.

Jo Reed:  And I think that is a good place to leave it.  Marisel, thank you so much, and again I just can't express my admiration for this book and tell you how much I liked it, how much I learned, and how much I cared.

Marisel Vera:  Thank you so much.  I really, really appreciate you.

Jo Reed: Right back at you!  We were revisiting my 2021 interview with Marisel Vera—she’s the author of the novel “The Taste of Sugar.”  And you can keep up with Marisel at Marisel Vera.com.  You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow Art Works wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple it helps people to find us. And as always, we’d love to know your thoughts about the podcast—send us an email at artworkspod@arts.gov. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Marisel Vera: I have always been a storyteller because my mother was a storyteller.  My mother was always telling me stories about growing up on a mountain in Puerto Rico.  She would talk about the spirits that roamed in the mountains and how she didn't believe in them because the church said not to, but yet she would tell these stories, and other people would tell these stories, and I was always a child that listened to stories. So I think that just from the very beginning my life has been shaped by stories and storytellers.

Music Credit: “NY”  written and performed by Kosta T, from the cd  Soul Sand, Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed:  From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Today , we continue our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month with a conversation with Tejano artist and teacher Amalia Ortiz. Amalia is an award-winning performance poet, performer, and playwright. The author of two acclaimed collections of poetry—including The Canción Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs which doubles as the script for a punk rock musical, Amalia directs the theater arts division at the acclaimed arts education program SAY Sí.  Begun in 1994, SAY Sí—which stands for San Antonio Youth Say Yes—is a year-round, long-term, tuition-free arts program for high school and middle school students primarily from under-served neighborhoods. A recipient of the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award in 2002, SAY Sí has some 200 students from over 70 schools in its on-site programs while reaching thousands of Bexar County students through its outreach programs. Amalia Ortiz joined me to talk about her work at SAY Sí, her own extraordinary art,  and the intersection between the two. We began by talking about the on-site programs offered by SAY Sí.

Amalia Ortiz: So, SAY Sí is a year-round afterschool arts program. They have four different studios for two different age groups. We have our middle-school program, we call WAM-- Working Artists & Mentors-- and then our high-school students. And the WAM students get to choose two of the four studios. So, we have visual arts-- what you think of as a traditional arts class: drawing, painting, sculpting. We have media arts, which is photography and filmmaking, and some digital artwork. And then there's the HIVE, and they focus on video games. They do coding. They do more computer-type arts, but then they also do more experimental arts. They just did a sound installation, and they also cover gaming and graphic novels. And then there's the theater arts studio that I work in.

Jo Reed:  Let’s hear in some detail about the work you do in the theater arts program.

Amalia Ortiz: I'm proud to say that all of the work that our theater produces is all written by the students. And I have middle-school students and high-school students.  So I'm very much a facilitator, asking questions. We're given a theme. So we do research first. Right now, we're researching Dia de los Muertos, and then I ask a bunch of questions, like, "What do you have to say that's different from all the other media out there, about Dia de los Muertos?" And then we start writing, and really, it's the students dictating to me. I'm at a computer, and I do shape it. I do talk to them about the structure of a play-- the introduction, the expoSítion, introduction of the characters, riSíng action, main conflict, falling action, all of that. So, definitely, by the time they graduate high school, they are playwrights, and that is deliberate. Based on my experience as an actor, you can get frustrated waiting around, waiting for the callback, waiting to be cast, or you can create your own work, in your own voice, about topics you care most about. And that's the main idea that I try to impress upon all my students, is that they have agency to tell their own stories.

Jo Reed: Okay. Now, who are the students-- in theater arts, but at SAY Sí, more generally? Where do they typically come from? Who are they?

Amalia Ortiz: So, they're coming from all over San Antonio. The program is highly recognized, so it can be competitive. We have interviews about two times a year, and we do want to interview our students to make sure that they are serious, that they are committed, because there is a time commitment involved, especially in theater. Pre-pandemic, we tried to keep our numbers at 70 percent at or below the poverty level, and so that other 30 percent, it becomes competitive with people who are above the poverty level, but are competing to get into the program. Then we really have to discuss their portfolios, what they have to offer, what they can share with our other students.

Jo Reed: And I’ve read alumni often go on to have an important role at SAY Sí.

Amalia Ortiz: Yes. We engage with our alumni so much. Our alumni are often hired. We have an ABC program, and that's artists in communities where it's kind of a mini SAY Sí, where they go into the schools. Our WAM program is Working Artists & Mentors, so we often hire some of our high-school students to come into the middle-school program, to be mentors, so that they also are exposed to get experience with leading young students, so that they can also graduate high school with some sort of teaching experience on their résumé. And I've had students that have gone on to get degrees in theater, and they are teachers now, and they remember their first experiences in the classroom, when they were in high school at SAY Sí.

Jo Reed: And you also serve many students in community programs. How are they different from the programs that you actually house, or are they an extension of them? How does that work?

Amalia Ortiz: So, that is usually our alumni. Most of the ABC instructors are alumni, and they are going into the schools. And so it is different, in that they are going into the public schools. And... so, I used to do workshops in the public schools, and I feel like it's taking the art to everybody. I feel like, with SAY Sí students, we have students that want to be there, students are already drawn to arts. It can be more difficult going into an afterschool program in a school where, sometimes, students are only there because their parents don't want to pick them up until after six, and so, "My mom made me do this thing." And so I feel like it's a harder audience.  I've worked that kind of audience before. I think it is just equally as valuable, if not more so, because some students have no clue that they're artists. They just haven't been exposed to it, and they need that exposure to something different. And it is a shame that there's so many schools where they're cutting back on the arts, and so there are more and more students that have never taken an art class. They have no idea what that is. So, when we talk about, "What medium are you interested in?", they don't even understand that question. It's like, "Okay, there's painting. There are-- there's acrylic and oil. There's pastels. There's charcoal." And there are students who just really, when they think of art, it really is restricted to the materials that they come across on a daily basis: pens, Sharpies, markers. And sometimes, even just exposing a student to a new medium can just really wake up their imagination.

Jo Reed:  SAY Sí has grown so much since it began in 1994 and you actually have just moved into a new building, which apparently has a big gallery space, and it looks like a gorgeous new theater. Are you open for business? Is that open yet?

Amalia Ortiz: So, we are open. We moved in last August, and we were working with an architect, and we had these plans to have-- our old building, I had a black box. So, in the expansion, I was going to have a black box, plus a theater acting studio, plus a proscenium theater; plus, we wanted to have outside performance spaces. And then the pandemic hit, and some funders were not able to continue with funding. Some funders' interests changed. As we all know, during the pandemic, the priority became feeding people, and housing people. And so we are slowly building back our program. We have moved into the new studio, but-- <sighs> I want to say it is probably about five times larger than SAY Sí, and that's just a guestimate. And we have renovated one-fifth of it, so far. And so there are four big studios. So, instead of a black box, I do have a large theater space, but I come from the tradition of Chicano theater. I come from the tradition of, definitely, "The show must go on." I've done theater in found spaces, in backyards, and it is still a beautiful room, and it is a big room. My challenge has been: how do we treat this as a black box, rehanging some of the old theater curtains, and rethinking seating? We used to have a technical booth, and so instead of a booth, where is the best place to set our sound and light booth? So, if you have a big room, how do you convert any big room into a theater? And we've already had two large productions in that space. Our next Muertitos Fest, we have a really great, huge loading dock that takes up the length of the entire building. And last Muertitos Fest, we had a band out there. This Muertitos Fest, we're going to have performances out there. So it is really rethinking theater. We’re learning to do lights on trees that are movable, so we can set up lights and roll them out onto that rolling-- the loading dock, and then roll them in. But we are in the middle of a capital campaign, and the goal is to have the rest of the building renovated, and eventually I will have a black box. And I think the goal is still to have, eventually, a state-of-the-arts proscenium theater.

Jo Reed: Now, So the students are also learning behind-the-scenes skills, as well as playwrighting, and   performing and directing. They’re also learning all the crafts that go into making a production.

Amalia Ortiz: Yes. I approach the program very similar to everything that I learned in my bachelor's program, and so we do workshops in design--costume and set. We do workshops in stage management, in lights and sound, and not every student is good at everything, but they will gravitate towards those areas of theater that they have a special interest in. A student will ask, "I really want to do costume design," or, "I have an idea for set," or, "I really want to paint a backdrop." And it really is their theater troupe, and they come to me with ideas, and I will ask, "Okay, so, what are your set ideas. In the past, with Muertitos Fest, when it has been a three- or four-day festival, our students are all stagehands, and they learn how to help bands with microphones, cables, how to strike a set quickly, how to set it back up. And then we have stage management. But, as students of theater, by the time they're in high school, they get to see it all. And then their Capstone project, every senior has to do a senior show, and I think the majority of the projects have been, a student writes a play, and then they cast it, and they direct it. But we have had-- this past senior show, we had a student who was more interested in performance art and installation, so she built a giant blanket fort, and then she had a performance inside. The inside of the blanket fort was made to look like a teenage room, so it was very messy, with clothing everywhere. She also had comfortable rugs and pillows, and a big, soft chair, and she had her performers take turns sitting in the chair, reading out of a book, like it was story time. And so the audience would come in and find a place on the floor, and sit and listen to a story. And all of our seniors have to produce an artist statement and bio along with that. In her artist statement, she explained how some of her first performances were in a blanket fort , and she wanted her audience to feel that  intimacy of that kind of micro-performance, in a small space.

Jo Reed: So, it sounds like such an interesting combination of a really rigorous program that, nonetheless, is very tailored to each student.

Amalia Ortiz: It is open to what they want to do with it. And actually, right now, the last couple of days, I've been doing teambuilding with my students, and I ask, "Why are you drawn to theater? Why are you drawn to the arts? What do you want to get out of it? What do you have to say? Who is your community, and what do you have to offer your community?" I'm very community-minded, because I look at this pyramid. If you think of the arts as a pyramid, at the top, especially with theater and actors, it's the A-listers. It's the people on Broadway. It's people who are doing the million-dollar films. But at the bottom of this pyramid, of this triangle, is the everyday theater-makers, who are working every day in community theaters, who are working in found spaces, who are working in educational theater. And all of these theater workers deserve dignity. And in speaking with my students, I tell them, "You can wait around to be discovered. You can go through the mainstream American route of creating theater, and as an actor, you are a dime a dozen. Or, while you're waiting to be cast, and while you're working on your craft, you can also work on telling your stories. And if you aren't necessarily the best writer, you can have a community of friends where, 'Oh, that person is a good writer, and that person is a great director, and that person is a great tech person,' and work with them to create your own stories." I really encourage them to... to create original theater, because that was the route for me, that has given me probably, my entire career, I owe to the community that I've worked with in San Antonio, and that has opened up networks, actually, throughout the United States, for me.

Jo Reed: We mentioned COVID, and what it meant for the building, and the construction of the inside of the building. What else did it mean for SAY Sí? How did you-- how are you-- responding to it?

Amalia Ortiz: When I think back on the year and a half that we were teaching arts online, I don't know how we got through it, but we did. And so it really was signing on through Zoom for the students, trying to offer them some sort of light in that very dark time. It was such an unimaginable storm that we weathered. I could say, from the theater point of view, we became filmmakers, <laughs> because we were doing it over Zoom, so we were thinking more of the camera lens: How do you act to a camera lens? And so, coming back into the classroom, it is reminding them, "You have to project. You're using your whole body." Most of the students, the high-school students that I had, graduated or dropped out of the program. And so, when we came into the building, it really is a whole new group of students that maybe didn't have any kind of arts training during the pandemic, and so it is a lot of 101. I do see smaller attention spans. I get it. Students are traumatized, and obviously, getting back into school was a struggle. And so it is a slow build to reintroduce what is a discipline to them, and explaining-- I've had that conversation with them: "While you're here, I'm really asking for your focus, and your commitment, and your time." And our classes are actually shorter and fewer. We used to have high-school students four days a week.  Now I only have them for two days a week, and it really is us trying to be open to families who are still recovering from COVID, who have transportation issues, who have illness in the family. We have students who are working, and we understand that. And so, really being more open to doing what we can, with the time we have. And it's pretty difficult doing theater on just two or three days a week, but we are still moving forward, and we're still making it happen.

Jo Reed: Well, I mean, it's been such a time, and in San Antonio, you're not just dealing with COVID and the racial reckoning the whole country is dealing with, but you're dealing with issues that are going on on the border, and with immigration, and I have to believe this isn't just an abstract issue for many of the students and teachers.

Amalia Ortiz: It's a very personal issue to me. I grew up on the border. I am-- my-- <sighs> it-- I almost said, "My grandparents were immigrants," but, actually, that goes back to my grandfather. He was in the Mexican Revolution, and settled in South Texas, and this was before the Treaty of Guadalupe. And then, literally, the border crossed him, when the border line moved. But they were considered immigrants, and treated like immigrants. And so, I have had students who are immigrants. The majority of our student body, I would say they are Mexican American, so they do have that history of  immigration, and also the attitudes that those in power have <laughs> towards Mexican Americans and Mexicans here in Texas, and San Antonio, specifically. We are a social justice organization. So, for example, we have Muertitos Fest coming up, and all of my students, whether they are Mexican American or not, I explain that this is a cultural holiday, and we're studying it as that. It began as, definitely, a religious and spiritual holiday, but we're looking at it from a cultural lens. And I would say that every project, I'm asking them, what are their stories? We've had projects where I ask them to interview their grandparents, and we hear those immigration stories. If we have bilingual students, those are skills that I want to have on stage, and so I ask them to use their bilingualism. We did a show where all the students had to interview someone. So, we studied Anna Deavere Smith, and watched Twilight: Los Angeles. Students had to go and interview people from their homes, and then they had to interview them on video. And then, that really is a 101 acting exercise, where you have to imitate that voice and those movements, and you have a video that you can really play again and again, trying to get as close to that original as possible. And that first time we did that exercise, it yielded a show called Hear Me Out, and we had two different students whose monologues were in Spanish, and one of them, specifically, was a young student who talked about his dad's story of crossing the border, and it's monologues, saying, "And then I met your mother, and then we moved to Houston." But all of this was in Spanish. And so these are the stories that the students are bringing to the stage. And I'm so proud of their bravery, and that's why I encourage them: that they have to tell their own stories. They are playwrights. They are storytellers. I just need to ask questions, and then stand back and listen to their stories.

Jo Reed: Well, in your poetry, you're often telling your own story, and I'm curious how growing up in the borderlands in Texas shaped your work, and continues to shape your work.

Amalia Ortiz: It was the strongest influence on my life, and therefore on my writing and my art. I grew up... I think, technically, three miles from the border. There was no border crossing there, but three miles from the river. And people would cross there. People would float across, and then run through these agricultural fields. I grew up in a home where my grandparents only spoke Spanish to me, but they believed that I would do better in this country if I spoke English, and so I speak newscast-- I was a radio announcer. I speak perfect English, and it's a plus and minus. My Spanish is not so good, because I didn't really practice it, but I'm fluent in understanding it. That comes out in my writing. There are certain words that have more meaning to me in Spanish than when I say them in English. I've written about that. I've written about code-switching. I've written about the personalities, the characters, that I grew up maybe not even understanding, not having context for some of the characters, until I was able to leave and go back. My last book, The Canción Cannibal Cabaret, is more abstract from the border, but it is still very much about-- it's set in a postapocalyptic landscape. And the reality is, the border is postapocalyptic. When I was working on my graduate degree at UTRGV, and I was mainly in the campus there in Edinburg, they asked for students to... to volunteer time to go to a refugee shelter, and this was in Mission, Texas. And this was the summer of the unaccompanied minor, and they were calling it-- it was a "border crisis." And going and volunteering time so impacted me, to remind me that apocalyptic reality does exist for so many people: for immigrants, refugees, globally. And so that's where the idea for The Canción Cannibal Cabaret came from. So, it is a punk rock musical, and one of the first poem songs came from me moving back to the border. This was after I had lived away from the border for 25 years. I would definitely visit, but I had lived in L.A. for five years, and then moved back to the Brownsville area, and was shocked to see the border wall. Now, there was some sort of border wall when I was growing up, but it was more of a fence. But this new thing … it's just so ominous, and to see the length of that, and to realize, most of my adult life, I looked back on this region through nostalgia, as a person who survived something, and it was safely in my past. So the move back, and I see this wall, I immediately wanted to write about it, and the idea for my second book came out of that.

Jo Reed: Okay. You're a performance poet, but as we've said, you have two books of poetry. Is there a difference between performance poetry and written poetry? I mean, I have my own ideas, and a lot of it has to do, I would think, with emphasis, but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Amalia Ortiz: I definitely believe so. I came to poetry as a performer. I had my bachelor's in theater. My brother was in Chicago, and so he really exposed me, in my visits to him, to the Chicago slam poetry and spoken-word scene they have. It's legendary. And I remember some of the first visits, seeing punk rock poets yelling and pounding their fists, and going up and down the aisles of a bookstore or a coffee shop, or poets speaking as though they're in a tent revival. And as an actor, that made sense to me, and especially as someone-- I write my own words. I want to perform them with the energy that I feel that they are due. They're special to me, and so that's how I want to perform them. I have gone through a graduate program, and there's times when I have had assignments where I have to really look at the page. That is something that I noticed: I wasn't really looking at what my stanzas looked like on page. I really didn't care about them, because I was just writing to memorize. And if you look an anthology of slam poetry, it's often left-justified, and then it's short phrases. And it's short phrases because that's how we memorize. I will memorize four to five words at a time, and that's also how we breathe, and so lines are usually broken up by how they sound when we're speaking them. And so I had to rethink what makes an interesting stanza; line breaks; how you can break a line in the middle of a sentence or a phrase, to create a different layer, if you're reading it on the page, as opposed to reading it out loud. So they're very different.

Jo Reed: The Canción Cannibal Cabaret is a published book—a themed collection of poetry has that is also the script for a punk rock musical which you have performed a number of times..

Amalia Ortiz: Yes. And--

Jo Reed: How is performing it—giving it full voice?

Amalia Ortiz: When I first wrote it, I was writing it for someone else to perform. I thought, "I'll find someone with a great voice, and I will direct it." But it was my master's thesis, and speaking with my chair at UTRGV, I would meet with her maybe once a month, and give her updates, and explain to her how the project was changing and evolving. But I definitely wanted it to be and  it is a defense of performance poetry <laughs> and performance. And all along, I saw it with costumes and lights and movement and choreography, even though it begins with poetry. And so, in graduating, I'd set up a date for the thesis defense, but I said, "I need to stage it." And I remember my chair was like, "You don't really have to." I'm like, "But I have to, so that you can see what it is, because you've only been reading it." I remember all the actors in the theater department were all busy with their finals, so I found students from the Mexican American Studies program there at UTRGV. They were sitting around. I'm like, "Hey, you, you're going to be in my musical. You're going to be in my musical." So I got a theater on campus, put it on, and I remember inviting my professors to it, because they needed to understand it's this three-dimensional work, and not this flat book. And so it is about an army of women who have had enough, and they are going to defend themselves, and their families, and marginalized communities. And one of the best  compliments I got was from one of my other professors. She said, "I want to join your army." And I said, "Yes. That is the goal.  I want the work to galvanize people to feel like they have agency. And standing alone, we are powerless, but the agency comes from when you connect to a community, and we decide we are going to make changes."

Jo Reed: Are you still giving performances of it?

Amalia Ortiz:  Yes. For two years, we were in the pandemic, but we are once again out and touring it. We actually performed at Barcelona, at a conference this summer, and our next performance is in San Marcos, at a film festival.

Jo Reed: You won the American Book Award in 2020,--certainly in large part due to The Canción Cannibal Cabaret. So, congratulations! Tell me a little about that award.

Amalia Ortiz: So, I have Rudolfo Anaya to thank for that, I know, because shortly after the book was published, by Aztlan Libre Press, my publisher was sending out copies, trying to get people to review it, to read it, to know that it existed. And I got the most amazing handwritten letter from Rudolfo Anaya, saying, "I hope she wins awards"; and then saying, "The introduction to the book was worth the price." And that's where I lay out my case. I talk about my influences coming from spoken word. I talk about my experience in the classroom, when people say, "Your work is didactic." And it's like, "Well, it is a teaching tool." And I see how, in poetry at that time, it wasn't in vogue. Political poetry wasn't in vogue. You don't want something that hits you over the head, that's too  "on the nose." "On the nose" was a bad thing. You want to be more obscure and more subtle in your poetry. So I wrote this whole defense-- really, just explaining my aesthetics, and Rudolfo Anaya said he loved the introduction, loved the poetry. It's embarrassing to repeat, but he said, "Amalia Ortiz is a genius." <laughs> And I--

Jo Reed: To hear that from Rudolfo Ayana must have been so gratifying.

Amalia Ortiz: And this was the year before he passed, and it's heartbreaking that I never got to meet him, but I know that he was on the board of the American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, and I'm certain that it had to have been him who took the book and gave it to the organization when they are looking at what books to consider. And I just know <laughs> that it was through his influence that he brought it to their attention. So, the award is actually for oral literature, and so I don't know if it's specifically for the book, but it is an award for me, for my defense of oral literature. And I think, very much, it is the book, because it is the book with the introduction that defends spoken work in academia, and is carving out a corner for it in academia: why it should be studied. I know that, for many years, there are people who didn't think much of slam poetry or performance poetry. I heard myself in workshops: "Your  your writing relies on theatrics." And it's like, "Well, I don't rely on theatrics, but theatrics is a part of my-- work." And I don't see that as a negative. I see that as adding. It becomes this-- it's this other thing. But, yes, the book was honored from the Before Columbus Foundation, and I was given an award for my work in oral literature.

Jo Reed:  Your résumé is astounding, and I'm curious what led you to teaching. Was teaching something you always wanted to do? How did you move to teaching, and does teaching and writing, for you, revitalize one another, or are they very separate spheres?

Amalia Ortiz: So, when I was in graduate school, I remember we had a class in professional development, and we had to write out a syllabus, and think about ourselves as professors. And I kind of knew all along, "I don't want to be a professor. I don't want to be a college professor." And my issues are, I don't want to be putting grades on people's creative work. And I would always say in class, I was getting my graduate degree because I was more interested in practical application. I want to write, and I want to perform, and I want to produce original theater, and I want to be in original theater. And I just really lucked out. When I interviewed at SAY Sí, and I realized they are working on these long-term projects, and that all of our projects are creating original scripts, I got so excited, because that's exactly what I want. I want practical application, where it is just show after show. To me, that's exciting, as a teacher, where I could show these students what I really do in life. I spend months researching, until I settle on a theme, and then I spent months writing. And then, once it's written, I spend a lot of time rehearsing. And that really is the schedule with our students. We spend about a month researching a theme, and a month writing, and then a month rehearsing. And to me, it's exciting, because I see it as, "I'm a producer. I get to produce all of this original theater." And to me, that's practical application. I'm not giving them writing assignments, and then reading them, and grading them, and giving them back. You know, we'll do writing workshops, and we'll critique each other's work, but then I push them to follow through. I don't want them to crumple up that assignment, or it to get lost in some folder that they never use again. It's like, "Okay, so what are you going to do with this piece now? Now you've written it. Now you've edited it. Now we're going to have an open mic." “Now, there are these local competitions you can submit it in." Every year, our students submit to the Scholastics Awards. And we just finished a script, and I was speaking with a student just yesterday, saying, "You were the lead writer on that project. You need to submit it to Scholastic." And so it's setting up realistic practices, as a writer and as an artist, and to me, that's exciting. I love that I am training young artists.

Jo Reed: Well, I was going to ask you how success, as a teacher, looks like for you-- how you would define that-- but I think you just answered that. <laughs>

Amalia Ortiz: I would say, I've had students that are going on, and they're producing their own theater, and to me, that's the best. I love going to see my students perform, and they are doing it. They are publishing. Students who weren't sure that they should go to college are going to college, or students who weren't sure if the arts was something for them, that are continuing the arts, even though they're not majoring in the arts. To me, that's exciting, is that they are taking their art seriously, their voices seriously. They're using their voices. That, to me, is exciting.

Jo Reed: And what about for your own work, Amalia? What feels successful for you, the way you define success?

Amalia Ortiz: Wow. That's a lot harder. I have recognition, I know I can do it, but as an artist, I still have those moments of self-doubt. I still struggle with impostor syndrome. I cannot think of success. I have to think of, "What do I have to say?" And I would say, daily, as I'm living my life, there's still issues where I feel powerless, and those are the issues I feel most inclined to write about. If I feel like I can't change it, I'm at least going to write about it, so that maybe it connects with community out there, and the community can start to change it.  That's what gives me hope. That's success, to me.

Jo Reed: And I think that is a good place to leave it. Amalia, thank you. Thank you for all the work you do. Oh, and a big shout-out for the video you did for Poetry Out Loud, about strategies that students should be thinking about when they're reciting their poems. So, thank you for that.

Amalia Ortiz: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for this interview. It really is  an honor to be interviewed, and great to give me time, as an artist, to reflect on my work, and to remember what it is I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. So, thank you.

 Jo Reed: That was poet, performer, and playwright, Amalia Ortiz. Amalia directs the theater arts division at the arts education program SAY Sí in San Antonio. Find out more about the organization at SAY Sí.org.  And you can keep up with Amalia, her poetry and upcoming performances of The Canción Cannibal Cabaret  as well as see videos of her poetry performances at Amalia Ortiz.net.

You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow Art Works wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple it helps people to find us. And as always, we’d love to know your thoughts about the podcast—send us an email at artworkspod@arts.gov. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.