Yael Valencia Aldana Is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx Poet Of indigenous, Black, and European Descent Who Offen Writes About Grief, Heritage, Belonging, and Identity in Her Work. In January, She published her debut full-LEngth Collection, Mestiza Black. The Collection Reckons with Her Multi -Faceted Identities and Pays Homage to Her Ancets’ Legacy, Resilience, and For ATTILO. From a poem about How People Silently Yet Soully ACKNOWLEDGE AND SEE EACH OTHER, TO A POEM ABOUT THE SUFFERING THAT Women of Color Enouge, To Works About Her Caribbean Parents and Her Longing For Connection With Her Colombian Grandmother, This is a collection Crowds of Being A Mixed-Race Woman Honoring Her Culture and Roots.
“Poetry has always been a Physical Manifestation of What I Feel. It’s Easier to Understand My Feelings to Physically see Thanm Subwhere,” Aldana Tells Hypatin “It’s Like I’M Looking at Humbody Else Because I Can Clearly See My Emotions. Like, ‘Okay, That Makes Sense Sense Besto You Lost your Mom. I understand That Process Now. Difficult Things by Writing About Them. “
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Aldana Moved with her family to the Neighboring Island of Barbados When She was Still Young. Later, She Moved to Brooklyn As a Teenager and Attended Bard College AT Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts When She was was Only Sixteen Years Old. It was there that She first Fell in Love with poetry, and more specifically with margaret atwood’s poetry. It Felt “Bizarre” and “Strange” to her and yet it gave the courage She Needed to be just as an predictable and “Weird” in her Own Work.
“I was inspired but i did not take it seriously.
Still, Though No One Knew About It, She Continued To Write: About Her Life, What She Knew, What She Saw of Her World in Brooklyn. It wouledn’t be until five Years late when she was in gran school that she drops the courage to show her work to mentors and ask for advice, as well as validation. To her surprise, She Got Positive Feedback From Her Mentors About Her Poem, Including One Entitled “Small Dark and Moving.” Written Over Thirty Years Aug, It’s One of The Many Older Poems to Make It Into Her Debut Collection, a Testament to The Power and Longevity of Her Work. To Be Sure, It is a “Strange” Piece, WHERE Aldana Imagines Herself as a Fish that Never Sems to Stop Swimming: “I Move in Waves / I Am / I Am Moving Rippleing / Hump My Back Humbor.” There’s a quiet sensuality and urgency in the undercurrent of the piece, where She’s Truly Embasso Herself as a New Kind of Being That Can’t Be Explaced Or Captured.
However, Her Career AT This Point Almost Eded Before It Even Really Began. AN ESTABLISHED POET THAT SHE RESPECT AND LOOKED UP TO, WHOM SHE ALMOST Considered mentor of Sorts, Asked Her To Send Over Samples of Her Work Because There Was A Possibility that This Poet Woold Be Uble to Publish It In The Journal She Worked For. With The Help of A Mentor and A Few Friends, She Put Together A Portfolio of Sub of Her Best Work. The Response SHE Received was Unlike Any other She’d Received Before.
“She Basically Trashed My Poetry. She Said I Needed to Stop Writing these Harlequin Romance Type of Poems,” Aldana Says. “I was devastated and i ugly cried for two days. But my friends and my community polled me out of that.
One of Her Friends Finds Her To Send The Poems Out, Even Though Her Confidenze Was At an All-Time Low. But without that support network, She was ot ost gone on to send out her poems or had two poems acceded for publication by a Journal within two days of her submitting. It Became Clear Than That There Was An Audience, A Desire, and A Need for Her Work.
Interestingly, Mestiza Black was not conceptualized as a collection surrounding a single theme or message. In Fact, it wasn’t conceptualized as a collection at all. All She Knew When She Was Writing The same poems in undergradgrad and grad School Was That She Loved Writing Poetry. IN FACT, IN GRAD SCHOOL, SHE WAS ENROLLED IN A NONFICTION MFA PROGRAM. But Scholarsh Allowed Her To Take Classses In Multiple Genres, She Was Able to Take Poetry Classses and Became Really Investted in Her poems When She Began Writing About Her Mother, Who Passed Away 18 Years ago. Suddenly, Her Work Gained New Life and Urgence, Which Even Her Professor Noticed.
“For the rest of that class, I Wrote Poems About Her. It Helped Me To Process The Un Prossed Feelings of Greef I had for her passing Because She was to Vry Powerful Person,” She Says. “So i kept writing and i wasn’t aware of How poems i had sore done and could scholarship something until my mentors suggested and submit to Chapbook answers.”
The manuscript she put together for the answer, which was for emerging writers over 50, was all about about her moment, People She’d Known, her experiences being Afro-Latin in the us Even Though She knew it was W That Didn’t Blong, She Submitted and Ended Up Being Collection As a semi-finalist Six Months Later.
“I Couldn’t Believe It,” She Says. “You do Things and On One Hand, You Think, ‘Oh, I Could Win.’ But when you know anything could happen, you shocked scholause you also Think you won’t.
One Section That She Knew Didn’t Fit Indo The Over Collection Eded Up Becoming Her First Poetry Chapbook Entitled Alien (s) after her ex-husband how nickname was alien (His Given Name is Alan). Unlike A Full-LENGTH COLLECTION, A Chapbook Can Range Anywhere From 20-40 pages and usually Focuses on a singular narrative or theme. For Aldana, The 24-Page Project is in Many Ways A Remembrance of Many Relationships, Including the One With Her Ex, as Well As with A Former Boyfriend. She Wanted To Be a Time Capsule of Relationships From Her Past, Romantic, Platonic, and EveryThing in Between, With Her Marriage As The Centerpiece.
“When I was Writing That Collection, I KNew I Wasn’t Who I Wanted To Be In That Moment, So A Lot Of The Poems Are a Backhanded Apology to Him,” She Explanins. “I was saying, ‘i was’t a great person and i was ~ great for you, but This is where we were and we did out ur best at the time.’ But that’s One of the Great Things About Being A Writer.
Written and Arranged in 2021, It Would Later Be Accepthed and Published in 2023 by Bottlec Press, Setting the Stage for Mestiza Black.
For a collection that was More than Double The Page Count Of Alien (s), it was obvious that her debut full-LENGTH WOOLD NEED A DIFFERENT APPROACH. SHE’D ALREADY WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED AGOKOK-WHICH WAS TAKEN TAKEN FROM ONE OF THE SECTIONS IN HER ORIGINAL FULL-LENGTH MANUSTHE-AND HAD TAKEN A CLASS Should Fit Together. She Says She Learned That “A Collection is a Whole Body,” Separate Parts Thatther Tell a Larger Narrative Or Story Arc.
“I KNEW THAT THOSE RELATIONSHIP POEMS DID NOT BELONG IN THAT OTHER COLTION. always say that’s why it was Picked up so quickly scholars Readers Can Follow So They Will Read It. “
For Her, The Narrative Thread Was Grouted in Explorations About Her Ethnicity, Origins, and Family History. As a person of indigenous Colombian, African, Scottish, and Spanesh Descent, It can take off complicated pleace to Occupy, Being Made of Up So Many Different Bloodlines. Throunge the collection, Such as the headline, “Black mestiza,” She recreates an interaction with “a girl … Sure of her black Wavy Haired Latin Cred” Who Tells Tells Her that “Mestizas are not black” and invalidates her identity spits Both Women Being of Colombian Descent. It Goes to Show How Little Understanding There Is Surrounding Multi-racial Experiences, How Much Bluent Ignorance There are to be about Latin America’s Complex History, including the esslavement of botch African and indigenous communities. How Coud Black Mestizas Not exist? Aldana Sems to Ask.
Eleven the manuscript was done, She made attempts Decions about What Sent Her Hersh To. She was wary of answers now Because there could Really Only Be One Winner. With an Open Reading Period, where there is no answers element, She Thought there were Lower Stakes and A Greater Chance of Being Selected for Publication. Three Months After She Began to Submit The Collection Out To Pressures, She Eded Up Being Accepted by Two and Receiving One Prize from The University Press of Kentucky for its New Poetry & Prose Series.
In All of Her Work, Aldana Embarce The Complexities of Her Identities, Her Family History, and Her Life, Almost Creating A Mythical Version of Herest Comfortable. If Anything, Writing Is Where We Become Truly Free. She notes:
“It’s okay to be a see unique, just person Because there are othher people lke you, and you have every right to be in this world as anybody else. anomaly and there was no one was like me. People in Relationships, It’s Found Such An Audience and I’M Shocked Bakers I Feel Like A Vary Specific Weirdo. Your Words, So Get Your Words out there. ”
