#marcelo hernandez castillo

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora

Edited by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Janine Joseph, and Esther Lin.

[plexurade]

Because the bird flew before             there was a word             for flight

                                     years from now                                      there will be a name                         for what you and I are doing. - Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Cenzontle

[89rooms]

Because the bird flew before there was a word for flight, there will one day be a word for what you and I do.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

[redheadbigshoes]

LGBTQ+ Latin-American of the day:

MARCELO HERNANDEZ CASTILLO 🇲🇽

He is a poet and activist born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1988. He is bisexual.

[littlereadsandteas]

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

In this highly lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. These poems explore the emotional fallout of immigration, the illusion of the American dream via the fallacy of the nuclear family, the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage, and the ongoing search for belonging. Finding solace in the resignation to sheer possibility, these poems challenge us to question the potential ways in which two people can interact, love, give birth, and mourn--sometimes all at once.

[jiessicas]

07.24.23 - 07.30.23

louise gluck: At the end of my suffering, there was a door

marcelo hernandez castillo: The lamps that wait inside me say come, the gift is the practice, the price is the door.

poets are such sweetly, necessarily, strategically useless beings; i like glancing at the menu even if i get an iced oat latte each time, the gesture of considering the other possibilities even if i may chose the same thing.

the spring that i unfolded back into its narration. i slipped in through the twist, look here, a mirror where i disappear.

me at grace cathedral: At the center of the labyrinth, there was a flower

??????????? ok wow this week was so intense but for the purposes of keeping up with some kind of update i'm uploading this lolol

things feel so full, and i feel myself really moved by each things that happened this week

i don't entirely know how i feel about all these things except that i'm wanting to pause to try to process all of these things - at the moment they feel like bits and pieces of images and feeling that each matter to me in different ways but i don't really know how they connect to one another (maybe they don't because time doesn't have to be teleological and it's fine) (i will note here i've been falling asleep on the couch most days...)

07.30.23 (sun)

pensive this morning but also happy cried - "i'm really happy you're in my life and through means that are of both of our accords / wishes" <3

picked up some pretty chairs (green, blue) from someone emptying their apartment near alamo square park

sat at automat for a lil w f & l then went to j's

saw t for the first time in a long moment and met v, set to a backdrop of jazz in a backyard, everyone was so familiar and comfortable w one another and it feels like a gift to get to step into a space like that

barted to east bay to catch a reading with marcelo hernandez castillo & ingrid rojas contreras that i'm still thinking about

late night shooting star cafe hangs with z, k, m 💭 many schemes underway

stayed up waaaay late w s, got crazy eyed because my working theory at the moment is that desire is at the core of Everything, it is Everywhere (My Obsessions Do Not Keep Me Up however i did stay up til 4 saying many many half sentences)

07.29.23 (sat)

so out of breath trying basketball this morning, "otherwise known as inequality ball" w v, d, s

"getting hit on and hit by a car - the two occupational hazards of running in san francisco"

getting crazy eyed talking about oppenheimer, as one does, it's funny to also remember that joyride is a piece of propaganda as well

wandered around destore, got hella sunburnt, etc

laid on j's couch to sift through all of my notes.....! from the last half year! j/me/s/n where sitting in different corners of the living room such that we saw each other through the frame of the window, or the bookshelf

carried a door home w s.. LOL

thai iced tea delivery to i

a devastating but necessary review of chen chen’s book, by angie sijun lou

07.28.23 (fri)

tab spacing has entered the chat... reading my own poems and wanting to hear the same cadences that i admire of others' poems

blick pickups; pier strolls with savory crepes; picked up "portrait of a ghost" to read on the pier for a little

theorizing interfaces with lil; "yeah my dad was a vc"

music and literature links ++ w f & c

powervixen afterwards; walked out at the end of the show to a misty lamplit stroll

07.27.23 (thurs)

spiraled w k at sfmoma….! don't even know where to begin here but fascinations w self help, sororities, appropriating vehicles towards others ends; turning over the model minority; bangh - speculative fictions, speculative instruments; native theories of mind +++++

undergrads from florida leaned over to tell us we should start that podcast we were talking about oh my gosh <3 it was so tender

we all went to a ksw reading and heard s read! z also came through, what a treat to sit in a room full of people at arc gallery

late night hangs w zzsskj hahaha at kowloon tong :) mango sagoooo +++

in a moment after the reading i thought, imagination and capacity are at stake

recognizing the mechanics of careerism, hope i can appropriate the structured choreography up until the point i dream of improv, remembering once again none of us are mere mechanism

07.26.23 (wed)

finished megan fernandes' "i do everything i'm told" -- "pound and brodsky in venice"; "phoenix"; "may to december"; "love poem"

re/read a.r. ammons' "modes against too much"

shuffled around my poetry books, and marveling at the books that have changed me, the poems in january of this year that have changed me & essays on poetry, like those in mary ruefle's "madness, rack, and honey," and "a poem as a machine?" by margaret rhee

texting lil plans for the thurs/fri/sat weekend! I Am A Social Creature

hung out at bpt and heard about a "political fellowship" started by a local entrepreneur / "you can tell irish people in new york because they're the ones just looking up and around" / bay area things: moving into an apartment complex and grilling together

suddenly blurting out: i don't want to do something stupid / there are plenty of things that are not stupid, like working at a bank, though they may be dry / i think i can stand drudgery, i can’t stand an apparatus that is doing something stupid

[redacted] is [redacted2]

stone fruit

07.25.23 (tues)

thinking about how experimental stories teach the reader how to read them as the story progresses, finds the form as it unfolds; wonder what it means to teach one another how to "read" or care for or love you as you begin to relate to one another

ran into s at the cafe, where i went to send a lil letter about rent raises (if you live in a rent-controlled unit in sf, check if your landlord has a license to raise your rent), thinking about butterflies and our friend whose name means butterfly

looping newjeans until it’s not longer possible to

read a bit of megan fernandes' "i do everything i'm told"

being a mild hater about [redacted] to c, who really liked it; appreciated the generosity of that convo which felt like an active practice in meeting someone in-our-differences (which has a slightly different feeling from Both Sidesism)

starting? continuing? what feels like a weird daunting process of decluttering; unearthed some corners of my room that may not have seen the light of day since i moved in ("i feel like i've been moving in for the last two years" between my own disorganization and rotating housemates) ~ it's finite but it's so long

i rotated my desk so that my back is to the wall, and cleared some floor space shuffling things into piles and filing away paraphernalia, and felt like i finally had a tenable workspace in my room (i'm going to look back on this whole house business and laugh at how deranged this all is...... but i'm currently In It)

sitting with the mild feeling of "i am drowning in books, i think" followed up with "i want to spend as much of my time catching up on them"

thinking about thich nhat hanh again and washing dishes; how ocean vuong said, "i spend more time washing dishes than i do writing poetry"

by eve i felt a natural close to the day, which i don't often feel -- it possible to do the little bits of work (breaking down boxes), however futile they feel, it feels like those little bits are, in that present, what is to be done (the usual worry about if i should be doing something else fades away, for a moment)

wellbutrin is working great <3 one step at a time

07.24.23 (mon) brain brrr like an overheating laptop fan; probiotics & pals

thinking about times people learn to drive from figures other than their parents, which for some reason makes me think of propagating plants; a propagation of drivers (l&f going to practice driving with f's sib!)

beginning living, or something which is to say, taking out the kitchen trash recycling compost, bathroom trash at the beginning of the week; sweeping up the fallen succulent; going mildly catatonic Thinking on the couch before managing to move to the bed to do the same

read alice sola kim's "now wait for this week" and in awe

a migraine set in (me, experiencing migraine & nausea - is my life falling apart / am i having an emotional breakdown)

my brain went brrr like an overheating laptop fan and then at the end of the day it was eased a bit with a voice hugs podcast / shuffling around my room to clean it / pickled goodies and probiotic drinks and a lil circle around the fire (coffee table candle) very thankful for my housemates ❤️‍🩹

[covenawhite66]

NORTHERN LIGHT: POWER, LAND, AND THE MEMORY OF WATER BY KAZIM AL

Recounts the formative years he spent on Indigenous lands as the child of Indian immigrants, learning about the impact of his father’s work on a dam on both the people and the environment in Jenpeg. The story he tells — of beautiful people, a unique community, and settler colonial dynamics

WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

This book is part nature writing, part memoir, part cultural criticism…and every bit of it is rendered in thoughtful and striking prose.

CHILDREN OF THE LAND: A MEMOIR BY MARCELO HERNANDEZ CASTILLO

Castillo lets readers into his journey as an undocumented immigrant to the U.S. His experiences (and those of his family members) not only expose some of the realities at the core of immigration policies, but they also render in robust, living prose the impact of such policies on real people.

POET WARRIOR: A MEMOIR BY JOY HARJO

Memoir from about a decade ago, was about the poet’s journey into the world of art and language. Harjo recounts the personal traumas and triumphs that were formative to her development and aims as a poet.

JUST US: AN AMERICAN CONVERSATION BY CLAUDIA RANKINE

Just Us she tackles racism from a different angle. The title’s play on words (just us/justice) cuts right to the heart of the book: it’s about having the necessary conversations about race and racism (past and present) in the United States in service of being better as a nation.

REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN: A MANIFESTO IN 41 TALES BY MARILYN CHIN

It follows Chinese American twins Moonie and Mei Ling Wong on their larger-than-life misadventures from adolescence to adulthood. It’s episodic in nature (as you may have guessed from the subtitle), but reads as a novel.

[smokefalls]

years from now there will be a name for what you and I are doing.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, “Cenzontle” from Cenzontle

[writtenwolves]

Lorena Hickok // Polly Verity // Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

[yourdailyqueer]

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: Born 1988

Ethnicity: Mexican

Occupation: Poet, activist

[goreprofonde]

“We can both be the bride, we can both empty our lover. And there’s nothing different about you— about me—about any of this. Only that we wish it still hurt, just once. Like the belts our fathers whipped us with, not to hurt us but just to make sure we remembered. Like the cotton ball, dipped in alcohol, rubbed gently on your arm moments before the doctor asks you to breathe.“

- Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, First Wedding Dance.

[evbooks]

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land captures his life experiences as he migrated his life from Mexico to the United States throughout his childhood and into his adolescence and adulthood. As a part of these experiences, Castillo express his desire to show his frustrations, stating that “Nothing said that it was against the law, nowhere did it say I needed to be courteous, but I knew I had no choice. I wasn’t yet a citizen, so I didn’t want to risk anything. I took out my green card and handed it to him” (197). In this instance, Castillo highlights how he is viewed as an outsider or “the other” in the United States because he had not yet achieved citizenship. 

[nakedinashes]

books cristina read in 2020: children of the land - marcelo hernandez castillo

“I ventured to believe that the function of the border wasn’t only to keep people out, at least that was not its long-term function. Its other purpose was to be visible, to be seen, to be carried in the imaginations of migrants deep into the interior of the country, in the interior of their minds. It was a spectacle meant to be witnessed by the world, and all of its death and violence was and continues to be a form of social control, the way that kings of the past needed to behead only one petty thief in the public square to quell thousands more.”

[ademella]

currently reading

[whilereadingandwalking]

Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poetic memoir about being undocumented, about the various ways our systems are corrupted, violent, and inhumane. It is a book about the toxic masculinity learned from his father, about love and trauma and paranoia, about a wound that cannot be healed, about never-ending displacement and fear.

It is a painful book, yet artful. I felt occasionally that it was repetitive in places, and that it could have been shorter, particularly the first half. But it comes together well; Castillo writes about his survival, about his mother’s survival, in a world made impossible, in a world of surveillance and denial. He writes frankly about his alcoholism, about domestic abuse and pain, about his mental illness and struggle. It is a book of heart-breaking decisions, insecurity, and anxious panic, and a memoir of the trauma the United States inflicts on undocumented immigrants.

[jiessicas]

07.24.23 notes on shame (or, on going through it then, going through it a little less so now)

i love to arrive, but hate to leave, which makes me late to things very often

because you and i are soft-bellied, porous (and so, permeable) beings, the feeling inevitably re/arrives through a new entry point, at which i always text you, "i feel like i've let myself down," it's the kind of feeling that magnifies the sense that everything i've done is "inadequate and embarrassing"

*haphazardly signs a cross over a former catholic.... to the beat of macarena*

i get a partiful invite to an event titled party(roommate lead gen event) and think, oh yeah, the city churns on, someone is leaving someone else, this is a thing that happens, though this time last year, leaving felt like a big deal

there's always someone moving out, someone new to the city, someone leaving their pristine furniture for recology or some other kind of reclamation

letting the words back in allows for more surgical operations, precise rewirings

being able to get out of my head when i dance is freeing, allows me to sidestep chronological time for a moment, is what allows me to continue on into the day

and i hope i can return to my words, my thoughts, without being subsumed by them, knowing there are other spaces i can depart for -- but i always want to come back

walking so i can arrive somewhere, even if it's home

an "ask polly" column's lines that have given me so much this year: "shame is the opposite of art" / “living in reality means becoming a scientist of shame…my shame makes my work possible” / “learn to treat yourself the way a loving older parent would”

louise gluck: at the end of my suffering / there was a door

marcelo hernandez castillo: the gift is the practice / the price is the door (my recording)

lucille clifton: and i taste in my natural appetite / the bond of live things everywhere (my recording)

morgan harper nichols: and you can still / find peace / and grow / in the wild / of changing things

in/consequential / as if there was a kind of retributive causality to live through

i feel psychologically, physically, unsettled from recent visits to the doctor, and a recognition of so many more things i want

in the past shame has felt like a punishment for joy -- shame freezes, makes every action tied to a deterministic reaction, casts the past as only a series of mistakes, casts X physical pain as not just a consequence, but a punishment, as if there was a kind of retributive causality to live through

it manifests in different ways; it seems, in what i've seen of you, the vulnerability is in disclosure, in giving a glimpse into the self; for me, the vulnerability is in receiving, in not turning away from others i hope to connect with, others who treat me with such kindness i don't intuitively believe i deserve

you text me lots of sweet, encouraging things, to which i reply - "the focus does feel like it’s more helpful when it’s on what it reflects of us and how we respond to adversity / the uncertainty is always daunting but that sense of dauntedness is a fear i won’t be able to figure it out [end up ok] just bc i can’t predict the future and that’s Fine"

there's another note on time i want to piece together, but for now:

july 2021 was heavy, july 2022 was heavy, july 2023 is steadier even if i don't know where we'll go from here -- <3

and left unsaid: there are many other things that happened between these julys that has made this current unfolding possible:

the homes that we made together, even if those homes no longer are the case, being carried and held by those homes into today

the unbelievable luck of something that feels like being thrown what seems like a life vest, out of nowhere

sometimes, in my not shutting up, bringing about pleasantly unexpected new paths / reaching toward, making my own luck in smaller ways

finding recommuning being with people who are grappling with similar things as me, having the great luck to grapple together