La femme violente

A couple years ago I wrote a post in Spanish about how a woman writes violence. It reflected on the word "hysteria", the concept for those unable to control their emotions, and forged specifically for women (the root of the word is Latin for uterus.)

The stigma we face as women is being perceived as beings unable to control their emotions, and therefore, our actions and beliefs lose their importance.

Even though today hysterics are not perceived as a strictly feminine ailment, women are still seen as primary emotional beings.

We all suffer like Cassandra, unbelieved and ignored because we are PMSing, or we're going through menopause.

But instead of stating that we are cold and unemotional I say that there is an inherent violence within me.

I know nothing else.

I deeply feel,

and my body,

the female body,

is primal.


It withstands violence,

the flesh rips,

it changes,

it breaks with each destructive wave.


But my mind is sharp because of the violence that fuels it.


A good friend told me a few weeks ago, that women are capable of enduring great pain and rising above because of their nature, because their essence and ability for bearing life (and the pain experienced when that promise of new life is taken away).

I don't shy away from the fact that I am a constant cataclysm inside.

I don't live and think in spite of it,

but because of it.


* "Ajax and Cassandra" painting by pre-raphaelite artist Solomon Joseph Solomon

Broken English

In one of Amy Tan's book (I just can't remember which one it is) one of her famous Chinese immigrant mother characters reflects on the perception her daughter has of her due to the level of English she is able to speak. Paraphrasing it goes something like this:

"She thinks because I speak this way that I think this way."

The idea is that when someone expresses themselves in a broken fashion, those listening perceive their thought as broken as well.

The quote moved me because of my interest in language, and because I live, as well, speaking a language that is not my own. Tan is, after all, a linguist and a daughter raised listening to English spoken as a second-language.

I worry about the way my daughter will think of me. For this I force myself to be as native in English as I can.

I worry how my in-laws will see me as well.

My daughter is being raised bilingually and I worry that she'll never be seen as one thing or the other.

This week Salma Hayek was on Letterman talking about eating escamoles and worms in Mexico, and the adjectives used to describe her in the news are "kooky and curious" and they criticize how all these years since she's been in Hollywood her English is still "funny". No thought goes into thinking that this woman speaks at least three languages.

But far beyond, I think about the perception we have of thought. That thinking cannot be separated from language. And so, the perception we have of other people's thoughts is based on their spoken word.

I also believe that being a second language speaker gives you a freedom and creativity that native speakers lack. Think about lyricists like Björk. The foreign language acquires a plasticity that native speakers cannot grasp.

I write in English in my own attempt to show my thought can be complex.

That I am more than my use of false cognates or my syntactic mistakes.

And I write, without knowing if anyone is reading.

A tradition of exile

I married into a nomadic family.

The last three generations of his people have move abroad for love.

And he laughed when his grandfather called it ridiculous when he decided to move for me.

He called his bluff and told him that he had moved to Africa during the war. His sweetheart followed him and they married there.

He moved for me and I did for him.

We both gladly gave up all we knew for each other.

I take pride in having jumped down the cliff without looking.

He told me the other day when we heard someone talk, once again, about moving to another country (and not follow through with those plans) that we are adventurers.

We follow through.

I've always thought it was my orphaned foolishness. Nomadic life is, after all, not in my heritage.

But yet it might be.

On my father's side there is nothing before my grandfather.

As if the universe started, on his side, with him and no one else.

I've heard the story many times before: Three brothers came from a Southern state. My grandfather was left in one town, his younger brother in another and the eldest went to another one.

It has never made sense to me since it sounds so infinitely sad.

I've moved three times into the unknown, thousands of miles away.

I am, after all, my grandfather's heir.

On interracial coupling

When I started seeing my therapist I gave her the back-of-the-DVD-summary of me and based on that she proposed the areas to explore/work on. Nothing really surprised me: sure, my existential mind (her words, not mine), our many and drastic moves, the trauma my body suffered given birth due to medical negligence, my miscarriage and infertility. But then she proposed something unexpected: my interracial, international, intercultural marriage.

"Mixed marriages have a higher percentage of conflict incidence" she said.

But it wasn't an area of concern for me. We've had, in ten years of this relationship, had rough patches but parting ways has never been an option.

Hearing from a third party that we have more of an uphill battle is not new to me. Catholicism, while not discouraging it, is really not too keen about it. They say it's more difficult to make a marriage work, especially if it is an interfaith marriage as well... Which we are...

The therapist said that the added problems come because "there's always a gap in communication, a clash that cannot be avoided."

Now, I have, quite literally written a book about it (not THE book, and it happens to be a poetry book, but a book nonetheless). My book explored the inability of man and a woman to communicate while they speak different languages, right after the fragmentation after the tower of Babel.

Years before I worried about the negative forecast.

Not anymore.

I have even written about our differences.

But I have learned that the biggest differences between us are not those based on our races or cultures. Not even our differences based on faith and belief. There is, indeed, an unbridgeable gap of understanding between us. A gap that has worried and made me sad before: a difference born of my metaphorical and word-based mind against his logical one; my weariness that keeps me up at night and his ability for happiness and calmness.

We are not unique. In fact, among our close friends there are many mixed marriages. Some have fared well, others, not so much. Even ones that seemed doomed from the beginning have flourished.

When we lived in the Bay Area it seemed we had arrived to the proverbial melting pot, a Shangri-La for interculture.

Even more so, in the recent weeks CNN published a study about interracial marriages being in an all-time high.

I write poetry in Spanish and even though he reads me I always had the nagging thought that he would never truly understand me. He does, in his way, without getting some obscure terms or a hidden image, but I have made my peace with it.

After all, just as my poems came to conclude, our biggest differences are not born of our nationalities or races.

It's because of that deep and unsurpassable gap between a woman and a man.

Alia Oliver

Maya gave you that name.

You live in the stars, and you twinkle at night. She told me this.

I believe her because my faith lies in the words falling from her mouth.

My grandfather carries you in his arms, Maya told me this as well.


Alia Oliver

I love the beautiful alliteration of your name.