MAGDALENA GOMEZ, Boricua Author Everyone Should Read

MAGDALENA GOMEZ  IS THIS ISSUE’S 

By Yadhira Gonzalez-Taylor
ygtbooks@gmail.com

We are glad to bring you a fierce mujer, celebrated poet, writer, motivational speaker, playwright, and social guerrera.

We met Magdalena, virtually, on a crisp winter morning in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she lives with her social justice warrior husband, James Lescault. The two introduced us to the wonderful wildlife residing in their backyard, and we were treated to her favorite dish of Pernil con cuerito tostado. For dessert, we enjoyed cookies and cafe con leche.

Magdalena has been a writer since the age of eight, a multidisciplinary cultural worker since the age of seventeen, and a teaching artist since 1976. Her maternal Puerto Rican roots hail from her mother from El Fanguito. and She has met family in Arecibo, Caguas, Coamo, and Santurce, and Manati. Her father was a middle eastern Gitano from Andalucía, Spain with deep roots in India, two places where she has lived. The two of Magdalena’s parents met in the Latinix resorts known as Las Villas, in Plattekill, NY, where she herself spent time during childhood, running among the apple orchards and rusty wooden swings at the Villa Madrid, where her parents first met.

She confessed to having been a precocious child who wasn’t interested in book titles like Dick and Jane other than for the conjured giggles that the name of hearing Dick inspired, said aloud. She was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, female Asian poets, any and all the poetry she could find in the library near her childhood home in the South Bronx.

Magdalena told us she writes to make up for the years of being silenced by those she grew up around, which ultimately resulted in a stutter. Silenced by the violence that surrounded the first nineteen years of her life, the writing was her voice, used in defense of the marginalized, aware, and being aware that their suffering and oppression were connected to hers and had roots; she passionately explored those roots. Her parents, however, were not pleased with her choice of subjects, people they labeled tecatos y putas. This inspired her to write about the marginalized, imagining their voices and writing monologues in their honor, hoping to create empathy from the world. This rebellious courage resulted in an unwavering and continuing interest in creating work that addresses: oppression and injustice social justice and equality; unsung and erased voices and cultures; women; the violence of greed, human trafficking and child abuse, not from a place of ay bendito but from a place of triumph, resistance, and humor.

According to Magdalena, “once we stop experiencing joy and laughter, the monsters win,” and in true guerrera style, she refuses to despair and create art instead. She is inspired by the exceptional and mundane moments of life, as she says, “they can be interchangeable and infused with magic and wonder when we choose to really see and experience life.”

Her poetry, plays, essays and short stories have been published in: The Progressive; Palabra Magazine; upstreet Journal; Ollantay Theater Journal; El Coro Latino; Tea Party Magazine; The L.A. Times; Massachusetts Review, among many others.

She is a monthly contributor of the AfAmPOV news magazine in Springfield, both hardcopy and online, for nearly over a decade, and some of her work is widely used in academia. She also has had an underground presence and following in New York City poetry scene in the 1970’s through 1980’s and has recorded some of her spoken word and songs in Spanish and English.

Her first audio book, Amaxonica: Howls from the Left Side of My Body, Rotary Records, Rencores was a result of a collaboration with saxophone master, Ted Levine and mix master, Warren Amerman. The second was Bemba y Chichon, also a collaboration with the band Zemog’s leader, Abraham Gomez Delgado and featured Latinix musicians, Juancho Herrera, and Reinaldo DeJesus.

She has been published by several presses. Shameless Woman, a memoir in poems, was published by Red Sugarcane Press. Bullying: Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions and Catharsis, was published Skyhorse Publishing and co-edited, with Poet Laureate of Springfield, Massachusetts, María Luisa Arroyo. She formed part of Breaking Ground/Abriendo Caminos, edited by the exceptional woman and poet, Dr. Myrna Nieves. She had poetry published in Ordinary Women, Mujeres Comunes, an anthology, and is the proud contributor to Iris Morales’s most recent book, Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA.

She Magdalena is always creating, currently working on three books: one on education, a memoir and the third, a secret project. She is currently producing staged readings of two of her plays, one about Afroborinqueño bibliophile, Schomburg: Erased: a poetic imagining of the life of Alfonso Arturo Schomburg, which this year was a finalist in the national Latinx Theater Commons Carnaval competition, and Perfectamente Loca/Perfectly Insane a play with music that addresses the colonial roots of familial violence in Puerto Rico, based on the true story of her mother’s life, who was sexually trafficked as a child on the Dominican-Haitian border. The latter play was a winner in the same Carnaval competition in 2014.

As always, we ask our featured authors, why everyone should support and become a member of PRIDA, and Magdalena told us that in her experience, “PRIDA is an organization rooted in the deep understanding, commitment and respect for the power of arts, that provides opportunity to build community, networks and ongoing support for artists of all disciplines. There is power in our unity and I can feel it all the way in Massachusetts.”

PRIDA encourages you, both artisan and non-artisan, as well as general creatives and fans of art to join us as members, so our mission of promoting Puerto Rican art and the artists who produce it can continue.

Last but not least, she sends her love to her fellow Bronxites and wants all of our readers to look for her online at www.magdalenagomez.com; latinapoet.com; TeatroVida.com among others and on Twitter and Instagram its @amaxonica. Her books are available on Amazon and an independent bookstore near you.

Congratulations to Ramon Serrano whose recent trip to NY introducing his book, Zen and The Art of Good Bullshit: stories from the Boricua Diaspora to audiences in Loisaida and El Barrio was well received.

Go to Amazon.com to purchase your copy.

Congratulations to Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa on the publishing of the 10th-anniversary edition of Daughters of the Stone.  Follow her at her author website for readings and other events.  dahlmallanosfigueroa.com