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I discuss the anthology What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family and its motivations with editor Sun Yung Shin and two contributors, V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan and Roy G. Guzmán. Sun Yung was inspired by an article written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, who wrote about “narrative plentitude” in response to a world of “narrative scarcity”, and how they conceived of the project as a way to think about the everyday person who might happen to write about food. Following Sun Yung's call, Sugi and Roy reflect on their own essays, how centering Minnesota is not merely a local perspective, and the collapse of academic and creative writing in what Roy calls “somewhere between theorizing and imagining”.
Lauren Brazeal, Matthew Baker and Rebecca Cai interview poet Roy G. Guzmán. http://athenaeumreview.org/podcasts/
Catrachos by Roy G. Guzmán by Poets & Writers
Roy G. Guzmán’s Catrachos (Graywolf Press, 2020) is a stunning debut collection of poetry that immerses the reader in rich, vibrant language. Described as being “part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story,” this powerful collection blends pop culture, humor, with Guzmán’s cultural experience to explore life, death, and borders both real and imaginary. “This isn’t supposed to be a history book, and yet it is,” says Guzmán in discussing Catrachos. It’s not supposed to be anthropology, sociology, or a testimonial either, and yet it is. “Those are the contradictions, especially when you’re a marginalized writer, your words are always operating on so many different frequencies at once.” “It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body, remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue, the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth of a country with dentures.” — from “Finding Logic in a Crushed Head” Roy G. Guzmán received a 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship. Raised in Miami, Florida, Guzmán currently lives in Minneapolis. Catrachos is their first book of poetry, published by Graywolf Press in May 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Roy G. Guzmán’s Catrachos (Graywolf Press, 2020) is a stunning debut collection of poetry that immerses the reader in rich, vibrant language. Described as being “part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story,” this powerful collection blends pop culture, humor, with Guzmán’s cultural experience to explore life, death, and borders both real and imaginary. “This isn’t supposed to be a history book, and yet it is,” says Guzmán in discussing Catrachos. It’s not supposed to be anthropology, sociology, or a testimonial either, and yet it is. “Those are the contradictions, especially when you’re a marginalized writer, your words are always operating on so many different frequencies at once.” “It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body, remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue, the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth of a country with dentures.” — from “Finding Logic in a Crushed Head” Roy G. Guzmán received a 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship. Raised in Miami, Florida, Guzmán currently lives in Minneapolis. Catrachos is their first book of poetry, published by Graywolf Press in May 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Roy G. Guzmán’s Catrachos (Graywolf Press, 2020) is a stunning debut collection of poetry that immerses the reader in rich, vibrant language. Described as being “part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story,” this powerful collection blends pop culture, humor, with Guzmán’s cultural experience to explore life, death, and borders both real and imaginary. “This isn’t supposed to be a history book, and yet it is,” says Guzmán in discussing Catrachos. It’s not supposed to be anthropology, sociology, or a testimonial either, and yet it is. “Those are the contradictions, especially when you’re a marginalized writer, your words are always operating on so many different frequencies at once.” “It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body, remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue, the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth of a country with dentures.” — from “Finding Logic in a Crushed Head” Roy G. Guzmán received a 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship. Raised in Miami, Florida, Guzmán currently lives in Minneapolis. Catrachos is their first book of poetry, published by Graywolf Press in May 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Recorded by Roy G. Guzmán for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on November 6, 2020. www.poets.org
On today's edition of The PEN Pod, we speak with poet Roy G. Guzmán about their debut collection of poems, Catrachos. They call it something like a Bildungsroman, a collection that reflects queer identity and resilience. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support
Mr. Bear's Violet Hour Saloon/The Secret Lives of Stuffed Animals
Show #250 on June 14, 2020…In which Mr. Bear reads from Roy G. Guzmán’s incandescent book “Catrachos.” These searing poems—on bodies and borders, identity and immigration, queerness and love, language and loss—will light your mouths and ears on fire.
Paul speaks with Heidi Czerwiec and Anthony Ceballos, and Roy Guzmán about their work. Heidi Czerwiec is the author of the poetry collection Conjoining as well as the essay Sweet/Crude: A Bakken Boom Cycle. Her work has been published in many publications. She teaches in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Anthony Ceballos received his BFA from Hamline University. His work has been featured in The Fulcrum and Yellow Medicine Review. Raised in Miami, Roy G. Guzmán is a Honduran poet whose first collection will be published by Graywolf Press. Jessie speaks with Cecilia Konchar Farr about her book The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit. She is a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the women's college St. Catherine University in St Paul. Her research interests all circle around novels—their history, their (women) readers, and their social, educational, aesthetic, and political work.