Featuring: Marianela Medrano

"The valley in which I was born is a tiny place. The suffocating embrace of its smallness drew out the need to expand beyond the circle of its mountains. The actual village was no more than 4 miles wide and deep. The constriction or, at least what felt like constriction, grew invisible wings on me. I learned to fly beyond the circle of mountains braided in a perfect hug. In adulthood, I have come to realize that somehow people in the valley understood the metaphor of the hugging mountains and imitated them, by leaning on each other to survive the inhospitable scarcity often brought about by the implacable hands of nature and the ill attention of the government."

I recently asked a couple of questions of Marianela Medrano, a participating writer at The Festival of Women Writers in Hobart, a counselor and a Dominican writer whose work includes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction. 

BC: Will you discuss what it means to be a self-described "keeper of Taino culture?"  in the 21st century?

M.M.: Yes, indeed. I have found my muse in the Taíno culture, a culture that was kept alive in me through the stories told by my parents, grandparents and other elders in my family. Taíno refers to the indigenous people who inhabited the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico in pre-Columbian times. However, I have equally found my muse in the African traditions that have also strongly influenced the culture of the Dominican Republic. My ancestors understood very well that storytelling has traditionally been a way of preserving history and core elements of cultures. Being a “keeper of Taíno culture in the 21^st Century means that I must continue raising the voice of the ancestor to say “we are here; colonization did not wipe us out.”  As all cultures, our culture has been transformed; shifted if you want, but never eradicated. Cultures don’t die, they get transformed.

In the particular case of the Caribbean, a mixture of European, African and indigenous cultures birthed a syncretism that enriches us, and that at the same time retains an essence very particular to each one of the cultures. The big problem resides in the intent by many to ignore the African and the indigenous contribution to the mix so that is why it is so important to be a keeper of these traditions. My work is intended to bring awareness of the two cultures, not to propose them as more prevalent, but to acknowledge how both influence us significantly. For instance, my doctoral dissertation is an inquiry into the elements of Taíno spirituality that can sustain women’s self-perception and enhance self-esteem. Also a great deal of my poetry celebrates our Africaness. The Taíno cosmogony encountered by the Spaniards upon their arrival was strong and thriving; it is only logical to infer that there was great trauma suffered by my people after their subjective world collapsed under the foreign intrusion. A new inquiry that opens after such acknowledgment is whether this trauma still impacts the collective unconscious of Dominicans and, most specifically, of their women. Such inquiry has kept me writing. My book Diosas de la Yuca/Goddesses of the Yuca was written with the intention to celebrate the Taino culture. Many of the poems are also reflections on the interfacing cultures. 

BC: Will you also express your thoughts about writing poetry and prose - is there a difference - in Spanish in an English-speaking country?

M.M.: Poetry is a wild animal that renders me useless, but that frees me, my hand and my imagination, impelling me to explore the unexplored and to speak the unspeakable. Prose too, at least in the way I cultivate it, has the space for the poetic but without the wildness of poetry. Prose calls for borderlines, poetry calls for bringing down all borders.  

Migration, entering a new geographical space means that we have to make complex negotiations of our social identity in the engagement of the self and others; our social identity, for instance, gets shaken when dealing with a second language.The challenge that comes with not being able to express ourselves with the fluidity of our maternal language offers an opportunity, an invitation to be transformed by the experience. The new place confronts us with a double bind of putting aside the potency of our familiar voice, in order to attempt to learn a language and to be accepted in the new context.  

 Learning to navigate a new space with language and social interactions that are different from my culture, has an impact on me and espouses my creativity; I have felt compelled to put the process in writing. Writing in general, reinforces my sense of self and sustains identity through space and place.   

A place becomes part of who we are. A sense of belonging serves to shield the self by stimulating linkages with other kindred spirits.  The key is to overcome the trap of becoming either too integrated or too isolated from the rest of the community. 

I am interested in the politics of identity, that is, the political effects of various accounts of identity in and on popular consciousness, both among Latinos and among other cultures, and that interest is what is guiding me in the writing of my new book La Casa es Humana/The House is Human in which I explore the impact of geographical space on the self.

Don't miss a moment! REGISTER, REGISTER, REGISTER for the Festival of Women Writers in Hobart, NY, the book village of the Catskills: http://www.hobartbookvillage.com/festival-of-women-writers.html