The
Latina Book Club is Celebrating Women’s History Month by showcasing female
authors and poets all this month.
We
thank these fearless women for joining the celebration and sharing their works
with us. Enjoy!
JASMINNE MENDEZ is a poet,
playwright, educator and award winning author. Mendez has had poetry and
essays published by or forthcoming in The New England Review, Crab
Creek Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and others.
She is the author of two poetry/prose collections ISLAND OF DREAMS (Floricanto
Press, 2013) which won an International Latino Book Award, and NIGHT-BLOOMING
JASMIN(N)E: Personal Essays and Poetry (Arte Publico Press, 2018). She
is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has received fellowships from Canto Mundo and
the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop among others. She is an MFA graduate of the
creative writing program at the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran
University, and University of Houston alumni.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
It's Women's History Month. What three women inspire
you most? Any female authors?
JM: The three women that inspire me the
most are: my mother, Frida Kahlo, and Lucille Clifton and Patricia Smith (black
poets).
Do you think a woman can be President of the U.S.?
JM: I do think a woman can and should be
president and I hope to see it in my lifetime.
If poetry is a song, what music would be playing at your
house?
JM: Almost any kind of bachata (but
preferably the old school kind), the rhythm, motion, "1, 2, 3" step
of it all reminds me of poetry. How bachata moves and feels in the body is how
poetry moves and feels in the body to me, that it can be fast or slow, loud or
soft, that in the pickup of that hip or leg or foot there's a pause/a breath,
that bachata began as a revolution in the DR, the poor fighting back against
oppression and dictatorship (Trujillo hated bachata), but it's also music about
love and loss and the blues. Bachata has a very specific dance step and
rhythm, the way a sonnet or a villanelle has a specific structure, but within
that there is so much freedom and creativity at what's expressed. Bachata
relies heavily on the guitar, the way a poem relies heavily on the line, to me
the strings of the guitar are like the lines of a poem.
What are you working on now? When will it be published?
JM: I'm working on several things now -
in production with Arte Público Press are two books - One children's book,
JOSEFINA’S HABICHUELAS, about a little girl who gives up eating sweets for Lent
and then learns to make her favorite dessert Dominican habichuelas con dulce,
and one as of yet untitled middle grade memoir about my life ages 9-13. I'm
working on edits for both and both will be out in 2021.
The main project that I'm actually
toiling away at daily is my choreopoem play and poetry collection CITY
WITHOUT ALTAR or EL DESALOJO, I've sent the poetry manuscript out to publishers
and contests...so who knows when it will be published?! But as I work on edits
for the play version, I hope to have several staged readings of it in the next
year or so.
LATEST WORK
 |
| Arte Publico Press |
NIGHT-BLOOMING JASMIN(N)E is a
stirring collection of personal essays and poetry. Mendez shares her story,
writing about encounters with the medical establishment, experiences as an
Afro-Latina, and longing for the life she expected but that eludes her.
WE WANT MORE
Learn more about Jasminne Mendez
here:
Website: www.jasminnemendez.com
Facebook: jmendezmemoirs
Instagram: @Jasminne
Mendez
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