Introduction: The Poet’s Path
In a recent conversation with the Institute for Latino Studies, award-winning poet and professor Natalia Treviño offered a profound window into the formation of an artistic identity. The discussion traced the powerful currents that shaped her work, from a bicultural childhood navigating two nations to a deeply spiritual exploration of grief that became the catalyst for her celebrated collection, Virgin X. Treviño’s journey offers a vital case study in how contemporary artists synthesize personal heritage, spiritual inquiry, and formal innovation to create work that speaks to universal human experience. Her reflections provide a map of her artistic evolution, beginning with the formative years spent between two worlds.
Navigating Two Worlds: A Bicultural Childhood
For many artists, the raw material of their work is mined from the landscape of their youth. For Natalia Treviño, that landscape was binational, a constant back-and-forth between the United States and Mexico. She contrasts the experience of feeling isolated in the quiet suburbs of San Antonio with the vibrant, “social loving environment” of Mexico, where she was constantly surrounded by family. Yet this duality created a sense of never quite belonging. In Mexico, she was the “gringa” who didn’t speak Spanish perfectly; in the U.S., she was the outsider.
This tension was crystallized in a formative childhood memory of first hearing the slur “wetback.” Too young to understand its venom, she believed her back was literally always damp after her bath. She recalled asking her father, “Will you tell mom to dry my back off better?” His face, she says, “turned into ash and anger” as he was forced to explain the word’s true, hateful meaning. This heartbreaking moment marked a painful loss of innocence and an awakening to her perceived otherness. It was this constant negotiation of identity—of being both and neither—that laid the essential groundwork for the themes of belonging, heritage, and cultural complexity she would later explore in her poetry.
Awakening to Language and Vocation
The path to a writer’s vocation is rarely a straight line, but rather a series of profound moments of discovery. Treviño’s journey began with an almost mystical childhood encounter with language. On a large chalkboard in her family’s garage, she accidentally combined the words “to” and “me,” creating “tome.” The sound of this new word—which she didn’t know was real—sent a charge through her body, awakening her to the magic inherent in language. This was followed by a third-grade assignment where she became so absorbed in writing that she produced an eight-page story. Her teacher was incredibly impressed, but because Treviño’s family moved shortly after, she recalls with a touch of pathos, “she never gave it back to me.”
However, the most pivotal moment came in college when she encountered the work of Chicana poet Pat Mora. Reading poems that reflected her own bicultural, binational experience was an electrifying revelation. Until then, literature had seemed to be about distant worlds—English moors and Grecian urns—that had little to do with her life. Mora’s poetry, Treviño explains, gave her “permission” to see her own experiences, her family, and her heritage as worthy subjects of literature. This discovery unlocked her unique voice and set her on the path to writing the poems that would define her career.
Virgin X: Grief, Faith, and Reinterpretation
Deeply personal events, especially the crucible of grief, can become the catalyst for an artist’s most significant work. For Treviño, the genesis of her poetry collection Virgin X was rooted in a profound and delayed grief for her grandmother, Socorro. Years after her grandmother’s slow decline from Parkinson’s, Treviño had compartmentalized her sorrow. The emotional dam broke unexpectedly when she scrolled past a photo on Facebook: an image of a woman crocheting on a bed that powerfully evoked her abuelita Socorro praying to the Virgin Mary. The sight “blew me away,” she recalls, and she began to sob, finally allowing herself to fully grieve.
This emotional release sparked a new journey. To understand her grief, she realized she first needed to understand her grandmother’s deep and abiding faith. She decided to “read about the Virgin and access her in order to get to know my grandmother.” This intellectual and spiritual quest transformed grief into a generative force. By exploring the multifaceted figure of the Virgin Mary, Treviño not only learned more about her grandmother’s spirituality but also found a way to feel closer to her than ever before, bridging the distance created by death. This deeply personal motivation became the foundation for the collection’s broader cultural and spiritual explorations.
Deconstructing and Rebuilding an Icon
Treviño’s work in Virgin X moves beyond personal history to engage in a broader cultural and spiritual dialogue. The collection’s title is a statement of purpose. The letter “X,” she explains, is a symbol of multiplicity: it marks a spot, crosses out, represents a crossroads, and stands for an unknown variable. She connects this directly to the inclusive term “Latinx,” which embraces all identities beyond a gender binary. In this way, “Virgin X” becomes an honoring of the Virgin’s own countless identities.
Fascinated that the Virgin has over 20,000 names, Treviño sees her not as a singular figure but as an infinitely adaptable icon. This multiplicity is reflected in her poetic forms. Feeling that the traditional sonnet was a “male form,” she began shaping her poems on the page to look like wings or flowing fabric. For Treviño, this act of “dressing” the Virgin with words is a way of honoring her, mirroring the devotion of artisans who have adorned her image for centuries with “the greatest clothing,” “gold,” and “lapis lazuli, the most expensive paint color there is.” In this powerful conversation, Treviño demonstrates how the deeply personal act of navigating family, faith, and loss can open a door to understanding the universal.
