By — Corinne Segal Corinne Segal Leave a comment 0comments Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/how-poet-ariana-brown-became-the-afro-latina-role-model-she-needed Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter How poet Ariana Brown became the Afro-Latina role model she needed Poetry Feb 8, 2016 2:29 PM EDT Poet Ariana Brown is the role model she needed. Growing up in San Antonio, Brown said she struggled to find other representations of herself — an Afro-Latina woman from a working class family — both in her community and literature. “I remember reading books and being so invested in the characters and the story, and then I would get to a certain line in the story where it would describe what the character looked like. And then I would realize, this book is not talking about me,” she said. “Part of my work is to always go back for little girl Ariana and figure out what it is she needed that she didn’t get.” In high school, Brown picked up the autobiography of Malcolm X. He was “someone who was also working class, from a poor family, a family of color, who didn’t have access to opportunities, who came from a neighborhood where you weren’t expected to excel,” she said. Reading about the way Malcolm X used language to command attention gave her a road map for her own future, she said. “If he could master that one thing that is accessible to everyone, then he could move an entire nation of people. That idea was really powerful for me, because I didn’t feel like I had access to anything,” she said. “I knew if I could just get this language thing right, then I could figure out a way to make it in this world.” She began with poems that grappled with her life in a predominantly Mexican community, taking the stage at the school where she felt bullied, she said. In 2011, she won a spot on her first slam team and performed at nationals. Brown’s poem “Inhale: The Ceremony” speaks to her relationship to her ancestors, a history that she said is often unacknowledged or disrespected. “I’m never racialized as Latina. I’m always racialized as black. My whole identity isn’t acknowledged [and] I’m assumed to be an outsider in almost every space I enter. That is a very isolating feeling,” she said. The piece imagines Brown at a poetry reading, bolstered by the unseen force of her history. Making that history visible, for herself and for others, is an important part of her work, she said. “The world is trying to tell me that my connections to my ancestors don’t exist,” she said. “I really want to acknowledge the intersections that history tells me aren’t there. Because I know that they’re there. The more that I dig, the more I believe that the people you’re told don’t exist in certain spaces always exist in those spaces.” To the same end, Brown is currently working on a manuscript of poems that looks at the conquest of the Aztec empire through the lens of black politics. “A lot of the work I’ve been doing has been excavating history that was lost to me in some way, reckoning with it, confronting it, making the connection, and then hypothesizing survival from there,” she said. You can listen to Brown read her poem or read it below. Inhale: The Ceremony “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” – Chinua Achebe i take the hurtful poem to the reading. the one about cortes or death or how i am running out of language & there is so much left in the story to tell & the room opens its skin to its bleeding heart & i reach in, coaxing the flood. someone else is reading & the walls shimmer with my kin. they burst from the room’s skirts, heads pooling at the surface, climb in rivers down the walls. i can’t say their names so i inhale; & everyone is here — swirling tulips splashing at my feet, bearing sweet giggles and fresh bread, blades in their cheeks, weather for names. the room bends its crooked finger, pulls me close. the elders brought sage & know everything i am going to say. i fall into liquid make wet every word; & nothing is lost. nothing was ever lost. there was never any magic; there was never this body or its wound, there was only water & the stories we passed through it. Ariana Brown is an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a member of the winning team at the 2014 national collegiate poetry slam. Ariana is currently working on her first manuscript and pursuing a degree in African & African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies at UT Austin. Her work is published in Huizache, Rattle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and is forthcoming in ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets from Arte Público Press. By — Corinne Segal Corinne Segal Corinne is the Senior Multimedia Web Editor for NewsHour Weekend. She serves on the advisory board for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. @cesegal
Poet Ariana Brown is the role model she needed. Growing up in San Antonio, Brown said she struggled to find other representations of herself — an Afro-Latina woman from a working class family — both in her community and literature. “I remember reading books and being so invested in the characters and the story, and then I would get to a certain line in the story where it would describe what the character looked like. And then I would realize, this book is not talking about me,” she said. “Part of my work is to always go back for little girl Ariana and figure out what it is she needed that she didn’t get.” In high school, Brown picked up the autobiography of Malcolm X. He was “someone who was also working class, from a poor family, a family of color, who didn’t have access to opportunities, who came from a neighborhood where you weren’t expected to excel,” she said. Reading about the way Malcolm X used language to command attention gave her a road map for her own future, she said. “If he could master that one thing that is accessible to everyone, then he could move an entire nation of people. That idea was really powerful for me, because I didn’t feel like I had access to anything,” she said. “I knew if I could just get this language thing right, then I could figure out a way to make it in this world.” She began with poems that grappled with her life in a predominantly Mexican community, taking the stage at the school where she felt bullied, she said. In 2011, she won a spot on her first slam team and performed at nationals. Brown’s poem “Inhale: The Ceremony” speaks to her relationship to her ancestors, a history that she said is often unacknowledged or disrespected. “I’m never racialized as Latina. I’m always racialized as black. My whole identity isn’t acknowledged [and] I’m assumed to be an outsider in almost every space I enter. That is a very isolating feeling,” she said. The piece imagines Brown at a poetry reading, bolstered by the unseen force of her history. Making that history visible, for herself and for others, is an important part of her work, she said. “The world is trying to tell me that my connections to my ancestors don’t exist,” she said. “I really want to acknowledge the intersections that history tells me aren’t there. Because I know that they’re there. The more that I dig, the more I believe that the people you’re told don’t exist in certain spaces always exist in those spaces.” To the same end, Brown is currently working on a manuscript of poems that looks at the conquest of the Aztec empire through the lens of black politics. “A lot of the work I’ve been doing has been excavating history that was lost to me in some way, reckoning with it, confronting it, making the connection, and then hypothesizing survival from there,” she said. You can listen to Brown read her poem or read it below. Inhale: The Ceremony “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” – Chinua Achebe i take the hurtful poem to the reading. the one about cortes or death or how i am running out of language & there is so much left in the story to tell & the room opens its skin to its bleeding heart & i reach in, coaxing the flood. someone else is reading & the walls shimmer with my kin. they burst from the room’s skirts, heads pooling at the surface, climb in rivers down the walls. i can’t say their names so i inhale; & everyone is here — swirling tulips splashing at my feet, bearing sweet giggles and fresh bread, blades in their cheeks, weather for names. the room bends its crooked finger, pulls me close. the elders brought sage & know everything i am going to say. i fall into liquid make wet every word; & nothing is lost. nothing was ever lost. there was never any magic; there was never this body or its wound, there was only water & the stories we passed through it. Ariana Brown is an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a member of the winning team at the 2014 national collegiate poetry slam. Ariana is currently working on her first manuscript and pursuing a degree in African & African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies at UT Austin. Her work is published in Huizache, Rattle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and is forthcoming in ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets from Arte Público Press.