![]() ![]() So it's not a specific one woman- in fact, it's all the women that you keep to yourself, which form the woman you get to yourself. All those selves that were not acceptable, or that people found irritating or didn't understand, they went on paper. And Mami, with her chancletas, would come down the hall, turn on the lights, and she would say, "Why can't you be considerate? Keep it to yourself." And says that this self that she kept to herself is what drove her to poetry. To set the scene of the poem, it's something that really did occur: At night, my sisters and I would be in the room with the lights off, and I would start reciting poems that I had memorized. How did you become the woman that you are, then, and who specifically is the woman you kept to yourself? ![]() nothing prepared the way, not a dramatic, wayward aunt, or moody mother who read Middle-march, or godmother who whispered, 'You can be whatever you want!' and by doing so performed the god-like function of breathing grit into me." ![]() I love the Toni Morrison quote, "The function of freedom is to free someone else." And I feel that when you give word to these secret selves, hidden selves, outlier and outlaw selves, that you kind of liberate. And because there is a listener, there is community, and there's a sense that you are connecting with a reader at those deepest levels of the self, and therefore maybe liberating them. I always think of that line from Dylan Thomas: "I sang in my chains like the sea." There's something about singing that, even if you're feeling chained, even if you're feeling oppressed, the song in itself is a liberation. It doesn't have to be about something big or important, but those little things you keep to yourself - selves that you keep to yourself - and give us language to understand them.ĭid you find freedom in speaking to those selves, in the process of writing those poems?įor me, maybe because I am a writer, naming is a kind of liberation. I wanted to touch on those moments where there's a little enlightenment or a little awareness. I'm trying to understand and give word to feelings that are yet to be brought into language. I feel like poems are where I am meeting up against the silence. Where did the inspiration for The Woman I Kept to Myself, your third poetry collection, come from?Įvery time I want to touch bottom in myself, I return to poetry. You're most famous for your novels - especially How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - but you started out as a poet. In a way, it's a very Code Switch-y collection - an acknowledgement that you're never all of yourself all of the time, and that so many of us exist perpetually in gray areas. But as a young girl, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and an aspiring writer, she said there were versions of herself that she wasn't always allowed to share, because they weren't acceptable to her family and surrounding community.įor Code Switch's summer book series on freedom, I spoke to Alvarez about her 2004 poetry collection, The Woman I Kept to Myself, in which she explores all her different selves - the little girl who recites poetry to herself every night, the sister who fears her family's reproach, the seasoned professor who prides herself on helping her students - and how she uncovered them with writing. Today, Alvarez is an award-winning author, most known for her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Growing up, there were a lot of pieces of Julia Alvarez that felt like they didn't fit together the way they were supposed to. ![]() Next up, a conversation with the writer and poet Julia Alvarez. In our last installment, we talked to author Ross Gay about the importance of celebrating joy. This summer on Code Switch, we're talking to some of our favorite authors about books that taught us about the different dimensions of freedom. The Woman I Kept To Myself, by Julia Alvarez ![]()
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