Interview between Yaccaira Salvatierra, author of “Sons of Salt,” and Rey M. Rodríguez

Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Nation, Huizache, Narrative, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, among others. Her honors include the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in Poetry, a recipient of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize, the Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship as a fellow at the Community of Writers Workshop, a scholarship recipient for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, a fellow at VONA, and a recipient of a residency at Hedgebrook. She has been a finalist for various awards such as the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets and the Lit Fest Emerging Writer Fellowship in poetry. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is a dedicated educator.

In my Storyteller’s Corner book review of her last book of poetry, entitled “Sons of Salt,” I write that she “captures with extraordinary skill and tenderness the love, grief, joy, and ultimate peace that a Latina single mother holds for her two sons finding their way into manhood. As a mother and educator, Salvatierra is uniquely suited to tell this story, and she does it with grace and dignity, elevating to high art the universal story of raising boys to become men without a father present.”

I could not put this book down. It is a book of poetry that the reader will desire to go back to again and again, so that they may reflect on what the author wishes to convey to the reader. I encourage readers to purchase her book so that they can study it for its craft and sheer grace.

In this interview, we discuss, among other things, the journey of grief and how her poetry served as a powerful vehicle for working through it and transforming it into something powerful.

Welcome to the Storyteller’s Corner of Chapter House, the literary journal of the Institute of American Indian Arts. We are thrilled to have you here. How did you get into writing?

It came to me first through prayers and spiritual songs. Even though I no longer practice Catholicism, it has been an enormous influence in my life, a basis of my upbringing. As long as I can remember, we recited the rosary most nights. Sometimes with candles. Most of the time, on our knees and our palms pressed against each other, placed above our hearts. I can still see myself at three and four years old praying. Some of the words were beautiful, haunting, and melodic in their repetition. Later, when I could read, the repetition of prayer, the meditative quality of prayer, showed up in my writing. The first poem I wrote was in second grade. It was a reaction to an emotion. I was in catechism, and we were encouraged to write cards to someone in the church community who was leaving our church. When I was done, I gave it to my catechist. She looked at her partner, who was leading the class with her, and said, “Yaccaira ha escrito un poema.” Yaccaira, has written a poem.  It was the first time I heard the word poema.

And what is poetry to you?

Poetry is understanding and expressing the world, this life, those I love, and the spirit. 

And when is it poetry for you?

Poetry is a spiritual experience. For me, it is when the spirit moves within me wanting to express itself–an emotion connected to others or the world.  The idea of the body being a church came back to me. Anywhere I am, I can pray in the presence of the mystery of the Creator, of love. 

Tell me a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up?

My parents are immigrants–my mother from Mexico, my father from Peru–who met in Los Angeles, where I was born. Not long afterwards, we returned to Mexico to live with my mother’s family. After a few years, my parents returned to the US because making ends meet in Mexico was challenging. This time, we returned with two Mexican-born brothers and my mother, pregnant. In the US, we lived with different family members before moving to San Diego. I attended elementary school in San Diego and middle school in South Pasadena. In middle school, one of my siblings and I resided with my godparents, who had once employed my mother. My mother was their live-in housekeeper, one of her first jobs when she came to the US. Towards the end of high school, I returned to my family, now in Chula Vista.

Thank you for giving me a little bit of insight into your past. Let's start talking about your miraculous book, “The Sons of Salt.” What was your inspiration?

My love for my sons was the inspiration. I was navigating some tough times, and a mentor encouraged me to write about this moment after I expressed my inability to write. She encouraged me to write everything down without the intention of publishing it; to not separate life from my writing. So, I continued to write. The first poems were full of fear and sadness, then I wrote my dreams. As I wrote, I began to write about my brothers compassionately–I also thought about my male students. As the poems took shape, a manuscript formed. I was encouraged by the same mentor–along with a second mentor–to polish it and send it out. I saw the importance in this work, too, and I did as they encouraged. 

Oh, there's no doubt it is important. Grief and redemption run through much of it.

I was particularly moved by the prologue. And then the next page. I love the Audre Lorde reference that poetry is not a luxury but a necessity. Can you talk about the prologue where you write, “I called to the ocean to send a wave upon me. Sea salt on a wound, the sea swelling near my ear”?

Can you just talk about your experience with grief and how it fits into the overall arc of the book?

Grief was a constant inability to be present; I was painfully outside of myself. It was debilitating. It felt extremely lonely because my grief came from what felt like losing a son, and seeing how society has less empathy for our boys. That’s how it felt, a kind of grief I didn’t hear people often speak about. I mean, for the reason I was grieving. 

In the book–when I go back and reread–there are parts where it feels like I am trying to stay afloat, keeping myself from drowning. I look for others, mostly women–mothers–who may be experiencing the same type of grief. Recently, I learned a term: disenfranchised grief. Grief that is not acknowledged or not validated because it doesn’t have to do with the literal meaning of losing someone, as in death. Because of this relentless, unbearable feeling, I desperately looked for solace or respite in nature, which is where I felt the presence of something bigger than myself. Creator. God. Peace. I grappled with this in the book, as well. 

My experience with grief is that it is like a wave. When it's most intense, you can’t breathe. It almost overcomes you. And then you get through it until the next wave comes. Is that how you experienced it?

Yes, absolutely.  I had to learn to “ride the waves,” to come to a place of deep understanding and acceptance of where I was in life. I had to remember things would pass and to trust that I would be okay in the end, but, most importantly, I had to learn to take care of myself because, otherwise, I wasn’t at my best as a teacher, a mother, a daughter, a sibling, a friend. 

How did you get the idea to write this poem and then put the footnotes? I have two boys so, as a parent, I relate to this urgency to save and find them. In the end, all you need to know is that they're okay.

In one of the edits, after feedback from my dear friend, Sara Borjas, where she suggested I dig deeper and share what was not being said about this mother in this particular poem, I added a footnote. I considered the footnote because I didn’t want to compromise the smallness of the poem. The footnote allowed me to say more about the speaker’s son. Her fear. Her desperation. I’m grateful for her suggestions. She’s a great editor. 

Yes. Now tell me the significance of the square throughout the book. Is the book also in conversation with Layli Long Soldier?

Layli Long Soldier has a poem in Whereas where she shapes a poem into the perimeter of a square. In one of my poems, “Prelude,” I write a poem like a square and inside, another square with a poem inside. She was my mentor at the time, simultaneous with my enrollment at Randolph College’s MFA program, and she encouraged me to write down my dreams after one of our conversations as to why I was having a difficult time finding purpose in writing. I’d have to say, it was more the timing of her presence during this time, her encouragement, her listening, which were the first sparks for this collection. You know, to me it shows the importance of mentors. I hope I can give this back to someone else in the future. But, also, Terrance Hayes’s book, Wind in a Box, came back to me when I thought of how to write this dream, in what shape. The first poems I began to shape as a square were in the section “Crows.” The box contained the dream, which later broke open. For me, it represents how dreams influence the living and how, many times, real life and dream life are intertwined. I was influenced by the idea of having something contained in a box, the metaphor was captivating to me. They became containers for emotion: fear, sadness, uncertainty–but also compassion, self-love, among other things. I tried to find ways to break out of the square representing dreams, bodies, and fears. I also use the square as boys’ shadows, it became a metaphor for being lost, the body without the shadow. The person without hope or love. The square also represented parts of cities where single mothers work as teachers, directors, or community organizers. 

Describe the animals you have in the book, the blackbird and the crow.

The crows came from a dream, and I used that dream in the first section, “Crows,” and the box or squares to explore the dream. In that dream, I’m falling deep into the ocean. It’s quite frightening to be sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean. I hear a voice in my dream–as I’m sinking deeper and deeper–reassuring me of my bravery, calming me. I was jettisoned back into the sky as soon as the fear was gone. I was in the sky with countless crows. It was as if I were one of them. I embodied their strength, their mystery, and their connection to a loving spirit world. It was a beautiful dream. So, I did my best to write it the way I dreamt it. Because of the impact of this dream on my waking life, knowing the turmoil I was experiencing would subside, these crows  became a metaphorical thread until the end of the book.

Let’s discuss your reference to a fear of drowning in water.

Thalassophobia is the fear of deep water; for me, drowning in the ocean. I think of water as the representation of the body. The water as God, Creator, an energy of love. I think of the water as me. I'm also thinking of myself in those moments filled with fear, as if I were without water, without God–Creator–necessary for my survival. I think about–and question–Catholicism in this collection, as I’m reaching for solace in something bigger than myself. But, what happened often while writing this collection was the coming back to a religion imposed on my family and their family before them, and how it was used to subjugate a people, many times with fear and not love. I became even more critical of our society and how our boys are affected by religion in colonialism.  In some ways, the idea of drowning was me also drowning in this belief system that was not helping me through tough times, and hasn’t for a long time now. Understanding the violent history of Western religion on people and the current repercussions of it angered me more. I don’t think it shows up that overtly in the collection, but because I was grappling with it, it’s there. 

That's powerful, and I'm curious about the line, “my body is salt.” How did you come on that line? 

My body is salt, the ocean, the water, a part of Creation, under the guidance of love. I was also grappling with my own existence, my own purpose, which was not only to sit in grief forever unable to live. I had to remember my body, I had to take care of myself to be more present for others. In this case, my son. 

Hmm.

In my dream, the ocean, which is salinated, spoke to me kindly and reminded me of my courage. My body is salt and brave and full, a part of something much bigger than the pains of this world by the hands of man.

Wow, because in a body, salt is the only word bolded.

The title is bolded. Yes. Some of the lines are grayed. The gray sections in “Crows” can be seen again as a different composed poem in the last section of the collection. I don’t know if that is easily noticeable, but I was also looking for answers in my own poems, which I believe were also coming from something outside of me. 

I knew there was an echo in terms of the use of shapes and so forth. Now, I understand more of the structure. Oh, that's great. I saw the shape, but I didn't realize that it was the poem that's in the lighter part that makes up the later section. It incentivizes the reader to read the book again and again. 

Yes.

Well, then, how about volcanoes and their meaning?

Yes, in another dream, the volcanoes became two bodies. Maybe a representation of two sons. In the dream, both volcanoes explode. A metaphor, of course, but also literal. In the dream, I am in that explosion and die. I actually died in my dream! This was the first time I’ve ever died in a dream. I have had near-death experiences in dreams, but I always wake up right before I do.  In this dream, with the exploding volcanoes, the death I experienced was the death of the body–not the spirit. When I come back as a spirit, fear is absent. Another spirit entity tells me that I will continue as a guide for the living, and that we are never alone, that we are always cared for. When I woke up, I had this deeper understanding that my sons’ lives were their’s to live, this life is theirs to journey and never alone.

Also, volcanoes represent mountains, a place representing my father’s homeland, in Ayacucho, Peru. In the dream, I am clearly on – what we know as – South American land between two volcanos. Of course, to me, my father, being far away from this land, his language, which is Quechua, represents an absent father far away from his land. I’m not excusing him for his lack of being a present father, but as a way to understand him. In this collection, I grapple with absent fathers. It’s definitely more complex than that. 

Yes. Now, you reference many Marías. Who is María?

I’m María, a single mother with two boys who are raised without a present father, someone to help guide them in this life. I'm María caring for our children as an educator while trying to care for my own. There are other Marías. They, too, are single mothers with sons. They are women of color who also raised their sons while working in a marginalized community. They are women doing a lot of community heavy lifting and in need of more support in raising their own sons while caring for other children, other boys, and a community. I’m also rethinking the biblical María and a woman. 

That's so powerful. You called them Maria del Viento and her son, then Maria de las Llamas and then Maria de la Tierra. How should we understand them?

It’s a prayer. I wanted to incorporate prayer in some way in this book. To pray for my sons. To pray for our sons, their parents, and the community. A prayer in the direction of realities confronting some women.

What was your inspiration behind the line, “with his hands, he will search for a pair of sunglasses to cover the hollow shadows within his eye sockets instead of searching for his sight.” 

The losing sight of one’s life purpose/direction. What is it we don’t see? What do we see? We can be misguided by individualism and consumerism, which take us farther away from compassion and empathy. I’d like to believe we are innate beings of empathy, compassion, and love and that we eventually will be pulled in that direction, that, ultimately, we will search for this. 

So let's talk about the “cento,” which is a poetic form, composed entirely of lines from poems of other poets. I read the long list of poets that you read and used to compose your cento.

I was trying to understand how men of color, in poems, write about their coming of age as a way to understand my sons and my brothers. I had called my brothers, and I talked to my sons, and asked deep questions, which made them uncomfortable, like talking about fatherlessness. There was a lot I wanted to understand. In the end, I used Chicano or Mexican American poets’ work to answer questions within my own poems through the cento using the poets’ voices.

And then you break the 4th wall in 65. And your reader. What the young man is getting here is an important point.

That's Joseph Rios's line. I wanted to pause right after the part of the cento where the male speaker's voice is honoring the mother: she is of the water and he is her. Machismo and marianismo are still evident in Latinx communities, especially where Catholicism is present. At least, that has been my experience. This collection was also an honor of the mother – of women caregivers in our communities. 

I see. It's meaningful in so many different ways. There are so many Chicano poets referenced so just seeing the list is extraordinary. And then hearing the voices. And then putting it together from the perspective of a mom, and as a woman, and being curious about this is even more powerful because they seem to be questions that we must answer, right? If we don't then we're going to lose our children. We don't have enough insight into the pain. And what better way to do that than through poetry?

It’s important to embody compassion. In this case, for our boys. Think about how our Black and Brown boys – all boys, really – are affected by American society, and that affects our communities. I’ve read poetry collections by male poets talking about their coming-of-age stories and navigating oppressive systems in this country. Sometimes the mother shows up in poems, but it’s a brief encounter. I’ve wondered about the mothers in these poems.  

That's true, and it's not told, and the focus is always on the negative. But for boys there's a moment of crisis right now. What is it to be a man? What does that mean? What does that look like?

Yes. Through the collections, and many more not listed, there’s a vulnerability I don’t see in men often, a “Look, I’m drowning.” These collections are often difficult to read. I had read them before, but not altogether. It gave me anxiety. I felt impotent. I felt I had no control over what’s happening to our boys, our men. But I grew in insight, in compassion, and empathy by listening, which is something we need now more than ever. We don’t listen enough.

Yes. It is a form of healing. On page 61, you have this beautiful line “pain awakens to all the things we hold dear, and that is why it hurts.”

I believe that is Maceo Montoya’s line from Letters to the Poet from his Brother.

It's the irony of loving. It almost becomes a gift. Can you give me some insight into the poems that employ red boxes?

They are the María sections. The single mother, community workers, but this time with their actual names. This isn’t invisible work. There are women doing this work in our communities. There are a lot of people working for our communities, but I wanted to focus on single mothers with sons – mothers I met, who gave me permission to use their names. 

I also wanted to flip the “ Lot’s Wife” story from the bible. I wanted Lot’s wife to have a name, someone who wasn’t disobedient and punished for turning back to a burning city, but a woman turning back to return to a city of women and children in danger. The poems are red for the “burning” of a city and women’s bodies. “Lot’s wife,” the Marías, are alive and actively working to keep a city from burning and caring for those in mostly poor communities lacking resources throughout our country.

Yes, it's the impact of poverty. 

Yes.

I loved what you did there in a poetic sense. And maybe that's more impactful than doing it as nonfiction. It resonates with people more to do it poetically. The beauty of poetry now is that it's very accessible in a sense. So, okay, then the last section when we get to the ocean. How did that feel for you when you were writing it?

The last section ties back to the gray sections in “Crows.” It was a found poem, an answer to the speaker of the collection: me.  

And what did that do for you?

It gave peace. It didn't solve things or take away the grief. It doesn't take away the fear, but I was reminded that I have enough inside for my journey on this earth. That I, too, have a purpose. 

Did it bring you to joy?

Because it brought me a sense of peace, relief and hope, it definitely brought me joy.

Oh, I see! What do you do in the community? 

I teach literacy and poetry for middle schoolers at a low-resourced school.

Well, thank you for sharing your story and poetry with the Storyteller’s Corner. We are so grateful to you.

Thank you for spending time with me and this book, for everything you are doing in the literary community.

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a poetry book inspired by a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He participated in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a second-year fiction writing MFA student at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, Chapter House's Storyteller’s Corner, Full Stop, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review. He is a graduate of Cornell, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. 

Photo credit: Agustín Pacheco