Devlin Hall welcomed Spanish poet Paloma Chen on Tuesday for a bilingual poetry reading and an open discussion on culture, identity, and the creative process behind her work.
Chen opened a crowded lecture hall with a presentation on her background as a poet, activist, and journalist.
She highlighted one of her intercultural projects, Crecer En ‘Un Chino,’ as one of the most important steps in her career. In this documentary, she explored the nuance of the Chinese diaspora in Spain and the particular experience of growing up with migrant parents.
Crecer En ‘Un Chino’ is composed of a series of interviews in which she examines the reality of being an outsider in Spain, where she stated during the lecture that conversations on race are still “taboo.”
Chen described how winning II Premio Nacional de Poesía Viva, an esteemed Spanish poetry award, for this project led her to discover the joy in sharing her poetry.
“For the first time I was reading things out loud that made me very vulnerable … and I found the pleasures, let’s say, of sharing those poems in front of an audience,” Chen said.
The poetry reading alternated between Chen’s reading of her original poems in Spanish, followed by the English translations read by Wan Sonya Tang, assistant professor of Hispanic studies and director of the Asian American Studies Program.
Chen began by reading “Simultaneous Translation,” a poem in which a daughter helps translate for her Chinese migrant parents. When the daughter’s parents question certain words which the Spanish say about them, the daughter, instead of actually translating, changes the racist and stereotype-filled statements into words of admiration.
“Do the Spanish say that we’re puppets of the Communist party? I translate, no. The Spanish people say that, as a people, we’re very hearty,” was one example amongst the enumerated handful.
Chen delivered the words in a powerful cadence, her passionate inflection revealing her emotion.
The daughter character returns in the second poem Chen read, “Nihao,” as she now questions her own identity. The daughter is confused as to why kids at school are calling her Chinese, reflecting the phenomenon of racial awakenings, in which minorities suddenly realize they are different.
Chen often uses a sarcastic tone in her work to illustrate the definitive ludicrosity of western Chinese stereotypes.
“Hola, first Chinese girl I see reciting poems. Yes Señora, the rest of the Chinese only grow rice and produce viruses,” a line from “Nihao” reads.
The idea of being out of place and “othered” is continued in Chen’s poem “Obscenity,” where the speaker criticizes her parents for migrating, wondering whether they have an innate tendency for flight.
“Passports are an obscenity,” reads the final line of the poem, highlighting the cruel separation that can come from national identity.
Each individual poem was greeted by an enthusiastic round of applause from the audience, as the gravity of her words lingered upon each member of the crowd.
Chen also reflected on the Eurocentric ignorance towards Asian culture in the final poem she read “Colorblind.” In the poem, a white male character acts with an ignorant bravado. He takes her to a Japanese restaurant where he says real Japanese people eat, which becomes painfully ironic when the speaker recognizes customers speaking Chinese.
It is evident that Chen’s personal life and experiences are reflected in her poetry, but following the reading, she made clear that the anecdotes from her poems weren’t necessarily literal moments. She also explained how many of her poems were inspired by stories told to her by her parents, where she felt such strong emotion and subjectivity that they became stories about her.
While Tang had a series of questions lined up herself, she didn’t get a chance to ask them—the audience’s interest was reflected in the constant stream of queries which consumed the rest of the time available.
In the discussion after the reading, Chen spoke about the reception of her work in Spain, which to her was surprisingly positive.
She explained that people from all types of cultural backgrounds found parallels to her experience in their own lives.
“This taught me, again, the power of literature,” Chen said.
