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Immigrant Songs
hattie gossett weaves migrant experiences in a book of poems
One day, a few years ago, my husband and I attended an Argentinean rock concert in Miami's Bayfront Park with a friend of ours from Buenos Aires. We had a bird's eye view of the pit in front of the stage that separates the band from the audience, an area populated mostly by burly security guards, photographers, and the occasional VIP. When one man walked in front of the stage, he immediately began shaking the many hands stretched out to him from the packed crowd. Everyone seemed to know, or want to know, this guy. Bud and I didn't recognize him, but then we were new to this world of rock en espanol. "Who is he? Some celebrity?" we asked our friend, let's call him Alfredo.
Alfredo shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe, immigration?"
The movement of the people around the world may have replaced abortion as the hot-button issue of our time. Immigration combines two of the U.S.'s deepest worries: the economy and "homeland security." It's a hornet's nest of difficult questions that politicians wade into only with great reluctance, knowing no matter what they say they're going to wind up stung. Meanwhile, xenophobia is symbolic to many people from other nations of everything that's wrong with Americans: hubris, ignorance, fear. (Not that Americans have a corner on xenophobia: Just ask the Africans in Paris, or the Asian proletarian diaspora doing the globe's dirty work.)
hattie gossett plugs directly into the slipstreams of this debate in the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner?, her recent collection of poems from Seven Stories Press. gossett, a New York-based poet of page and stage, writes mostly in the voice of the confused, disappointed, and angry immigrant. There aren't a lot of refugees from other countries' war, oppression, or poverty delighting in the American dream in these stanzas. Recent newspaper stories back up gossett's bodega-level reports: More and more people have not found the embrace of Lady Liberty to be all it's cooked up to be, and have been returning home to their countries. The Miami Herald even profiled some Cubans who have gone back to their communist homeland – dios mio!
Alfredo shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe, immigration?"
The movement of the people around the world may have replaced abortion as the hot-button issue of our time. Immigration combines two of the U.S.'s deepest worries: the economy and "homeland security." It's a hornet's nest of difficult questions that politicians wade into only with great reluctance, knowing no matter what they say they're going to wind up stung. Meanwhile, xenophobia is symbolic to many people from other nations of everything that's wrong with Americans: hubris, ignorance, fear. (Not that Americans have a corner on xenophobia: Just ask the Africans in Paris, or the Asian proletarian diaspora doing the globe's dirty work.)
hattie gossett plugs directly into the slipstreams of this debate in the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner?, her recent collection of poems from Seven Stories Press. gossett, a New York-based poet of page and stage, writes mostly in the voice of the confused, disappointed, and angry immigrant. There aren't a lot of refugees from other countries' war, oppression, or poverty delighting in the American dream in these stanzas. Recent newspaper stories back up gossett's bodega-level reports: More and more people have not found the embrace of Lady Liberty to be all it's cooked up to be, and have been returning home to their countries. The Miami Herald even profiled some Cubans who have gone back to their communist homeland – dios mio!
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