In this deeply personal and reflective conversation, award-winning poet Aleida Rodríguez sat down with Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza, English Ph.D. student and Joseph Gaia Distinguished Fellow in Latino Studies at Notre Dame, to explore memory, migration, and the many meanings of voice. Held at the Morris Inn on Notre Dame’s campus, the discussion offered more than biography—it was a meditation on poetry, identity, and the quiet power of creative persistence.
Origins: The Making of a Poet
Rodríguez recalled her early years in Cuba—without books, but rich in oral tradition. She described evenings when her father and neighbors gathered under streetlamps to improvise décimas, rhymed couplets echoing the soulfulness of American blues. This early exposure to rhythm, voice, and communal performance left an indelible mark on her poetics.
Her literary journey began in earnest after immigrating to the U.S. through Operation Peter Pan. Reunited with her parents in Los Angeles, Rodríguez formed a pivotal literary friendship in junior high, exchanging poems without ever keeping copies—writing as connection, not yet as publication.
Becoming an Artist: Career and Community
Though she never imagined poetry as a viable career—her parents had little formal education—Rodríguez continued writing with instinctive dedication. A tip from a friend led to her first publication in Citadel, a student magazine, which affirmed her voice and opened new paths.
But as a Latina and lesbian in 1970s Los Angeles, she saw no one like herself on stage, in print, or behind the mic. “There were no Latinas in the audience. No Latinas doing open mic. I didn’t see anybody like me,” she said. Between 1977 and 1984, she founded rara avis literary magazine and Books of a Feather press—two of the first platforms created by a woman, Latina, and lesbian in the city’s literary history.
Language, Bilingualism, and Teaching
Rodríguez shared how her linguistic identity was reshaped in foster care, where Spanish was discouraged and English became a means of survival. When reunited with her family, she had become a translator—not just linguistically, but culturally. Her poetry inhabits that in-between space: she writes bilingually, often refusing to italicize or explain Spanish words—acts of resistance as much as style.
Her teaching—whether in schools or women’s prisons—reinforced poetry as a tool of recognition and transformation. “Seeing young bilingual students realize that poets are alive—and that their lives can be poetry—that changes everything,” she reflected.
Memory, Family, and Dream Logic
The conversation turned to Rodríguez’s collection Garden of Exile, particularly the poems that explore her mother’s life. In works like “My Mother’s Art” and “My Mother in Two Photographs, Among Other Things,” she remembers a woman denied creative outlets but rich in improvisation and presence. Rodríguez’s poems refuse sentimentality; instead, they hold contradiction—queerness and tradition, tenderness and silence, resilience and loss.
Dreams also play a central role in her work, not just as subject but as method. “Dream logic” becomes a poetic structure through which memory is refracted and reimagined.
Visual Language, Fairytales, and Form
Maravilla Zaragoza noted the painterly quality of Rodríguez’s work. The poet attributed this to her love of visual art, architecture, and craft—shaped by a life with a visual artist and her affinity for tactile, handmade objects.
Rodríguez draws from myths and fairytales, not as retellings but as deep structures for exploring exile and psychological transformation. Colors—green, yellow, blue—appear with symbolic precision, rooted in both personal memory and aesthetic instinct.
She also spoke of form as a generative constraint, choosing structures that fit each poem’s emotional rhythm. Her practice, she explained, is both deliberate and intuitive—an editor’s eye with a maker’s soul.
Lasting Impact
This conversation offered more than a personal history—it mapped the intersections of language, exile, queerness, and art with clarity and depth. Aleida Rodríguez’s trajectory, from an oral storytelling culture in Havana to pioneering literary spaces in Los Angeles, revealed how self-definition often begins where representation is absent.
By narrating her story without simplification and by creating platforms for others, Rodríguez has shaped a literary life that resists category. Her reflections remind us that poetry is not merely a form—it’s a stance: attentive, deliberate, and unafraid to hold contradiction.
For anyone thinking seriously about voice, memory, or the politics of publication, this conversation made one thing clear: staying true to your language, your rhythm, and your community isn’t just a creative choice—it’s a cultural intervention.
