To celebrate the release of Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, published by Nightboat Books, anthology editor Christopher Soto and I discussed both the editing process and the need for such a collection.
DM: As this is the first major literary anthology for queer poets of color in the United States, can you talk about your process of curating both historical and contemporary voices for inclusion?
CS: I had been editing Nepantla as an online journal for several years before creating this printed anthology. Thus, I felt pretty comfortable with the landscape of contemporary queer poets of color, but it’s a whole different world doing research to find the work of queer of color poets who are deceased. One of my primary concerns was that I cannot speak to the deceased and ask how they identify, and so I tried to be as respectful as possible about people’s identity markers in relation to the time periods that they existed in. For research, I turned to many adjacent anthologies for new names of poets. I looked at Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men edited by Essex Hemphill. I looked at MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry edited by Emanuel Xavier. I looked at This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. I looked at Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics edited by Trace Peterson and TC Tolbert. There were so many adjacent anthologies and places for me to do research, I was reading thousands upon thousands upon thousands of poems in order to understand who were key literary figures or undervalued literary figures that I may not have heard of but should be part of this anthology. Prior to editing this anthology I didn’t know about poets such as Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, Beth Brant, Mark Aguhar, and so many more. Now, I’m able to position their work in relationship to everything that was being produced in their time periods. I was also reading so much literary criticism and reviews and essays, and I was sifting through lists of award winners at places such as Lambda Literary to find new poets. This was such a long process and also made me realize how deep and vast the influence of queer of color poetry is. There are so many queer of color poets that I still don’t know or whose names I might not have spent enough time with, when coming across them in my research.
DM: Were there writers who ended up in the anthology with whom you hadn’t already been familiar, and how did you discover those poets?
CS: Some of the writers that I didn’t know who ended up in the anthology, I found through research and some of them had sent me poems on Submittable. I would say about 1/3 of the anthology I had not heard of before editing it and had no clue that I would be falling in love with their work. I’m very happy to be including voices that are new to me and prior to a first book alongside legends such as Langston Hughes and Audre Lorde. That feels pretty special.
DM: In an anthology focused on historically marginalized voices, did you feel a particular pressure in terms of questions of inclusion (considering educational and economic barriers, and so on)?
CS: Yes, most definitely I tried to be as inclusive as possible in this anthology. I was trying to be very considerate of the gender breakdown. I didn’t want the anthology to be primarily cis-men and it’s not. I didn’t want any trans or gender non-conforming poets to feel tokenized. I wanted to make sure that a diverse array of stories were told, without being fetishized. I wanted the book to be able to discuss everything from sex and kink, to food, to police violence, to the unjust occupation of Palestine, to settler colonialism and indigenous sovereignty, to migration and documentation, etc. Since the anthology is queer poets of color, a large portion of people who are published in the anthology have had difficulties with access to economic and educational access. My QPOC community has been disenfranchised by the state, generation to generation. You can see it in the poems that we are writing and what we’re talking about, from the AIDS crisis to mass incarceration, and everything beforehand.
DM: In organizing this anthology, there seems to be a flow from poem to poem and poet to poet that resists the usual ordering devices (chronology, subject, alphabetization). Can you talk about creating one work of art (the anthology) out of many?
CS: I didn’t want to organize it alphabetically because that seemed pointless to me, when considering the goals of the anthology. I didn’t want the anthology to feel like individuals sitting unconnected in a phone book and without conversation to one another. I thought for a while about organizing the anthology chronologically but I decided against it. I like the idea of chronological ordering because it allows the reader to see how one type of poetry or politic informed the work of following generations. I ultimately decided against chronological ordering though, because I was intimidated by it, if I’m honest. I felt as if there was so much more research that would need to be done if I were to organize the anthology chronologically. How many poets from the early 20th century have we lost to the archives that I wasn’t able to unearth? How many people may not have been known as being queer in their time periods but with more research their personal lives become more apparent? I had to realize that I had a capacity limit and there was going to be no way that as one individual in a couple of years that I would be able to do enough research, to the point where I think it would do justice for me to organize this book chronologically (as if I could even come close to understanding the vastness of the literary landscapes that have proceeded me in the past hundred years). I bowed down, feeling so small before all that I do not know… Ultimately, I decided to organize the books in accordance to emotional energy. I felt how poems drifted into one another thematically and structurally and emotionally. I think this organizing has made for an informative and transformative read.
DM: You’ve mentioned the necessity of queer ethnic studies classes and the need to bring the voices of QPOC into queer studies courses as well. Are there programs or efforts that you see as leaders or templates in that regard, like the Queer Ethnic Studies initiative at SFSU?
CS: There are a handful or queer/trans literary classes and ethnic studies classes that I’ve visited over the years where I think this anthology can be helpful. There are also courses like yours at Johns Hopkins that I visited, I think it was called “Poetry and Social Justice,” where I think this anthology could be adapted. There are LGBTQ Resource Centers with libraries and Raza Cultural Centers and so many places on universities and in communities where I think this anthology should be taught and stocked. I think you’re asking about larger universities’ programs that already have an intersectional purpose (and not necessarily just individual classes) though. To that extent, no I haven’t seen any majors / initiatives in academic spaces that have an intersectional emphasis, like the Queer Ethnic Studies Initiative at SFSU (which I’m just hearing about for the first time). What I’ve seen most frequently is students having a particular emphasis within their major about an intersecting subject. Or I’ve seen students who want to major in an intersectional topic go into a school of individualized study. For example, the Gallatin School at NYU.
DM: How do you see this as the next push of intersectional feminism?
CS: I hope this book is picking up where Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa left off, after This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. I see Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color as being part of a move away from white cis-hetero-patriarchy and biological determinism. I see this anthology as a push towards a trans-feminist of color future with more fluid notions of gender and race and sexuality. I’m thinking about the t-shirts that says “The Future is Female.” I’m hoping this anthology is a product that laughs at those t-shirts and responds, “The future is trans-feminist.” The other day I wrote on social media that I view my gender as not stagnant but rather, my gender as a narrative that is informed by its chronological and geographical surroundings. Someone responded that my analysis of gender is Marxist / dialectical materialist and that made me happy. I hope this anthology provides further insight into the ways that race and gender and sexuality have shifted over time. I hope this anthology gives honor to the contributions that queer of color artists have made over time and that the poems included emotionally / intellectually impact the readers. I hope this anthology also just makes some queer brown kids in the middle of nowhere feel less lonely.