Speaking At A Time; Hablando A La Vez (Redbat Books Pacific Northwest Writers)

Amelia Díaz Ettinger's book of poems, Speaking at a Time, is a gathering of poems about her father, her daughter, the town of Caguas, and the race track, among other things. These recollections pulse with energy, and they echo the poetry of Lorca and Neruda. This is a strong, first book.--PETER SEARS, Oregon Poet Laureate"In Speaking At A Time, Amelia Díaz Ettinger first celebrates growing up in 1960s Puerto Rico. She names what she loves-the island's tropical riches, the lives of those who loved her, the daily facts of working people. In forthright bi-lingual vernacular, the poems catalog her urban childhood and adolescence in Caguas--a physician's daughter thriving in a multi-cultural milieu. Evenings, she listened to her father and uncles reciting Hispanic poetry. On television, she heard Pales Matos and Nicolas Guillen. At school she learned to write her own poems. When she immigrated to the United States in 1974, and began her quest for an education, love, career, marriage, family, everything changed. In the 1990s, while raising her children far from any community of Puerto Rican writers or poets such as those Nuyoricans who publish their experiences in the United States, she realized that her immigrant quest had created great cultural and linguistic distance between herself and her children. So, the later poems develop conflicts between immigration and integration, between Anglo and Hispanic cultures, between alienation and community. To resolve those conflicts, the poet synthesizes cultures and languages, best symbolized by the book's bi-lingual presentation, while she continues to document and question what it means to be a Puerto Rican exile in Oregon. This is strong and honest work--filled with love and grief and eloquence. With these solo pages, she joins her distant contemporaries--Victor Hernandez Cruz, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Tato Laviera."--GEORGE VENN, Eastern Oregon University, General Editor, Oregon Literature Series

• | Author: Amelia Díaz Ettinger
• | Publisher: Redbat Books
• | Publication Date: Aug 01, 2015
• | Number of Pages: 96 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 098959243X
• | ISBN-13: 9780989592437