Elvira Prieto Publishing Fund
Donation protected
Dear All,
I am writing to ask for you support as I embark on a journey to self publish a collection of poetry and prose about my personal and educational life in the borderlands. My writing embodies an expression of testimonio, memories, and moments in my life journey that are informed by my experience as a woman and farm working child of immigrants and from my path through Stanford, Harvard and other spaces in the US as well as Mexico. I am a Xicana, una mujer del campo e hija de imigrantes, and my writing seeks to give light to the humanity and experience of those who are often invisible. I retell my life recuerdos (memories) with the intention of creating spaces of light, love, and healing for individuals and community.
Visit my website to learn more about my work and feel free to join my guestbook. Sign up for the mailing list on the contact page to receive updates on the project, future public readings and to be notified when the book becomes available.
www.elviraprieto.com
Your support is greatly appreciated! The funds collected via this campaign will help cover expenses associated with editing, copy, design and publishing fees. Thank you so much for helping me publish my first book!
I think of my life on and in the borderlands both physically and metaphorically…the journey of my body and spirit has extended from my mother's womb to Fresno to Mexico to Reedley to Stanford to Harvard to NYC to Texas and back to Stanford and all of these experiences inform my testimonios and poesia. As a mujer and Chicana my experience in those spaces has been one of living in the margins, the fields and rows themselves look like physical borders, and they are spaces that we crossed every day, from home to school to fields, and the violence and injustice inflicted on my physical and spiritual body has made me a locus of borders that I am always trying to navigate. My identity is such that I feel like I am crossing borders every day.
Sample of my work:
en el fil
I am dressed from head to toe in men’s clothing. Layers cover every possible inch of skin in 115-degree weather. Sweat drips from each pore and muscle cells expand and contract with the ritual bending of my knees and back. I follow him down the row of grapevines. I am my father’s shadow in his old work shirt and pants. The vines are bursting with Johnson grapes, and we toil under the same sun that will dehydrate every bunch into raisins within a few days time. We are a team. He picks. I dump. I dance with my father down the row of grape vines, our movements choreographed in synch as we maximize time and motion. He moves down the row on his knees. We are both taller than the vines, and he must get under the blanket of foliage in order to reach each bunch of fruit. The dark green of the leaves is muted by a thin film of dust and chemical pesticides that attaches itself to our clothes, patches of exposed skin, inhaled with every breath. I am hunched over in a perpetual squat, my spine curves and hips swivel as I balance the tubs of fruit, one at a time. We exchange tubs of rusted metal, empty for full and full for empty. He fills a tub and puts it on the ground next to him. I give him my empty tub and lift the full one off the ground. I shift around in half a turn and dump the fruit over the sheets of paper on the ground in front of me. This forward motion requires a delicate balance as I bend forward. The farmer who hired us brought his tractor through each row before we started picking. He smoothed the earth with a flat metal disc so that the grapes will dry on an even surface. I have to dump the fruit and spread it out on the paper without stepping forward. The paper needs to lie flat, so I must not step into the row and create uneven spots in the earth. “Si el patrón mira pisadas, se va a enojar,” my father reminds me every day. “Necesitamos el trabajo.” The sheet of paper is the color of a brown grocery bag and about three by four feet wide. Each paper is called a tabla because they used to be made out of wood. On a good day we get paid twelve cents per tabla, make two hundred tablas per row, and complete two rows. “Mi hija trabaja como un hombre,” my father boasts. “Que lastima que naciste mujer.” I am 12 years old.
pintura de arena
tambien los llevo en mi cuerpo
pero por dentro
donde no tan facil se pueden ver
o quizas, sí
maybe you can see my bruises
depending on the angle
in which you look at me
los llevo como carga
en mis pulmones
cuando no puedo respirar
son bolsas de arena
taken from the beaches
of my mother’s skin
donde las imagines de tierra
hacian frontera contra el mar
cada recuerdo de violencia
llena mi interior
blocking my airwaves
crushing my heart
mi corazón esta rasgado
de tantas rupturas
every bruise on my mother’s body
is reflected in my core
el mapa corre por mi columna
freeways branching out
en discos desgastados
por tanto trabajo
por querer demostrar
que yo
una niña
podia trabajar en el campo
como hombre
mi mapa es todo un mundo
de tierra y mar interno
y la concha de tortugá
que llevo en la espalda
my invisible turtle shell is my home
every memory
a bony dermal plate
I carry on my back
sí, mis moretes estan aquí
siempre
and they may never disappear
I am writing to ask for you support as I embark on a journey to self publish a collection of poetry and prose about my personal and educational life in the borderlands. My writing embodies an expression of testimonio, memories, and moments in my life journey that are informed by my experience as a woman and farm working child of immigrants and from my path through Stanford, Harvard and other spaces in the US as well as Mexico. I am a Xicana, una mujer del campo e hija de imigrantes, and my writing seeks to give light to the humanity and experience of those who are often invisible. I retell my life recuerdos (memories) with the intention of creating spaces of light, love, and healing for individuals and community.
Visit my website to learn more about my work and feel free to join my guestbook. Sign up for the mailing list on the contact page to receive updates on the project, future public readings and to be notified when the book becomes available.
www.elviraprieto.com
Your support is greatly appreciated! The funds collected via this campaign will help cover expenses associated with editing, copy, design and publishing fees. Thank you so much for helping me publish my first book!
I think of my life on and in the borderlands both physically and metaphorically…the journey of my body and spirit has extended from my mother's womb to Fresno to Mexico to Reedley to Stanford to Harvard to NYC to Texas and back to Stanford and all of these experiences inform my testimonios and poesia. As a mujer and Chicana my experience in those spaces has been one of living in the margins, the fields and rows themselves look like physical borders, and they are spaces that we crossed every day, from home to school to fields, and the violence and injustice inflicted on my physical and spiritual body has made me a locus of borders that I am always trying to navigate. My identity is such that I feel like I am crossing borders every day.
Sample of my work:
en el fil
I am dressed from head to toe in men’s clothing. Layers cover every possible inch of skin in 115-degree weather. Sweat drips from each pore and muscle cells expand and contract with the ritual bending of my knees and back. I follow him down the row of grapevines. I am my father’s shadow in his old work shirt and pants. The vines are bursting with Johnson grapes, and we toil under the same sun that will dehydrate every bunch into raisins within a few days time. We are a team. He picks. I dump. I dance with my father down the row of grape vines, our movements choreographed in synch as we maximize time and motion. He moves down the row on his knees. We are both taller than the vines, and he must get under the blanket of foliage in order to reach each bunch of fruit. The dark green of the leaves is muted by a thin film of dust and chemical pesticides that attaches itself to our clothes, patches of exposed skin, inhaled with every breath. I am hunched over in a perpetual squat, my spine curves and hips swivel as I balance the tubs of fruit, one at a time. We exchange tubs of rusted metal, empty for full and full for empty. He fills a tub and puts it on the ground next to him. I give him my empty tub and lift the full one off the ground. I shift around in half a turn and dump the fruit over the sheets of paper on the ground in front of me. This forward motion requires a delicate balance as I bend forward. The farmer who hired us brought his tractor through each row before we started picking. He smoothed the earth with a flat metal disc so that the grapes will dry on an even surface. I have to dump the fruit and spread it out on the paper without stepping forward. The paper needs to lie flat, so I must not step into the row and create uneven spots in the earth. “Si el patrón mira pisadas, se va a enojar,” my father reminds me every day. “Necesitamos el trabajo.” The sheet of paper is the color of a brown grocery bag and about three by four feet wide. Each paper is called a tabla because they used to be made out of wood. On a good day we get paid twelve cents per tabla, make two hundred tablas per row, and complete two rows. “Mi hija trabaja como un hombre,” my father boasts. “Que lastima que naciste mujer.” I am 12 years old.
pintura de arena
tambien los llevo en mi cuerpo
pero por dentro
donde no tan facil se pueden ver
o quizas, sí
maybe you can see my bruises
depending on the angle
in which you look at me
los llevo como carga
en mis pulmones
cuando no puedo respirar
son bolsas de arena
taken from the beaches
of my mother’s skin
donde las imagines de tierra
hacian frontera contra el mar
cada recuerdo de violencia
llena mi interior
blocking my airwaves
crushing my heart
mi corazón esta rasgado
de tantas rupturas
every bruise on my mother’s body
is reflected in my core
el mapa corre por mi columna
freeways branching out
en discos desgastados
por tanto trabajo
por querer demostrar
que yo
una niña
podia trabajar en el campo
como hombre
mi mapa es todo un mundo
de tierra y mar interno
y la concha de tortugá
que llevo en la espalda
my invisible turtle shell is my home
every memory
a bony dermal plate
I carry on my back
sí, mis moretes estan aquí
siempre
and they may never disappear
Organizer
Elvira Prieto
Organizer
Stanford, CA
