INTERVIEW
(Conducted by Jan Tompkins on 6/24/04)
Growing
up in a single-parent household, how did your mother influence
your activism? Is it something that started during your childhood?
My mom
worked really hard at a job she hated and went to school at
night. But she still took care of us. So from a very influential
age, I had a strong role model and a tendency to root for
the underdog.
I started
working at the age of 13, which definitely politicized me.
I was working as a waitress in a pizza place, and the cooks
were always harassing me. For example, they would ask me if
I wanted to go horseback riding. As a kid, I was like, “Sure!”
You know, until they started laughing. They were gross.
At that
time, heavy metal was huge. It dominated the market like hip
hop does today, except it was the expression of white working
class youth. And there were extremely political elements to
it. Anthrax, “Among the Living” was one of my
favorite albums. In addition to the songs about Stephen King
novels, there were songs about drug addiction, the plight
of Native Americans, the lost promise of capitalism. I also
got really into Dead Kennedy’s, Operation Ivy’s
first album, the Butthole Surfers, these bands inspired me
to fight back.
During
the reign of Bush I, the Parents Resource Music Center (PMRC)
headed up by Tipper Gore, began their campaign of censorship.
There seemed to be a phenomenon of teenagers making suicide
pacts and killing themselves. Of course, this was all Ozzy
Osbourne’s fault. But the resistance and overall success
against censorship was what solidified my stance at any early
age. If you remember, Dee Snider, Frank Zappa and John Denver
testified at a Congress hearing together. Soon after, Jello
Biafra’s “Tales of the Witch Trials”, a
recorded memoir of his experience being targeted by the PMRC,
was released. I must have listened to it like 50 times.
Ultimately,
the seeds of my political views were planted because of a
specific set of conditions I grew up under, and the ideas
I was exposed to. Growing up in Flanders, there wasn’t
much to really get involved in. I remember my friends and
I had a big meeting to get an environmental organization started,
but after fussing over the name for like an hour, we ended
up playing Frisbee. I became an activist in the true sense
when I started going to college.
Beginning
your college as a biology major, then switching to journalism,
how did you receive training for photography?
I took
a photo class in high school. My sister was the artist in
the family. I think I was taking college prep courses or something
and I hated everybody in my classes. She hung out with much
cooler kids. But I was never any good at art, and really intimidated
by the other students.
Later,
as I became more politically active, I was amazed by the process
of organizing. Whether it was taking over the streets and
demonstrating, organizing events, meeting these incredible
people who were successful in transforming society was just
incredible. I wanted to capture it all. To me, it was this
beautiful thing and I wanted to share it with everyone. I
ended up taking a photo class at Middlesex County College.
It was a much more comfortable class for me, there was no
pretension there. I ended up spending all my free time in
the dark room, and since then, it has just been a matter of
trial and error, seeing what works, picking other people’s
brains, and taking an occasional class here and there.
As
a teacher, you teach in a school that has a predominately
African American population. How does a fair-skinned Caucasian
Woman from Flanders approach teaching students who witness
gang violence, drug abuse & discrimination on a daily
basis?
I learned
a lot about racism working on the campaign to oust Fran Lawrence
in college. Before that, our organizations worked in the United
Student Coalition, but our groups were basically segregated
by race. We had the white organization, the black organization,
the Latino organization, the Asian organization…in some
ways it was good because these organizations maintained their
autonomy, but in other ways it was detrimental because it
was a reflection of the same society I grew up in, the same
society we were trying to change. If you are organizing for
a progressive society, your organizational make up should
reflect that. There’s a very thin line there, I think
the two approaches should work in tandem.
But these
struggles were instrumental for me later. When I moved to
Newark, I had all these ideas about teaching the kids this
revolutionary curriculum. You know, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers.
But they also need to learn how to pass the SAT’s and
operate within a white power structure or else I’d just
be creating a class of unemployed revolutionaries.
It is
also evident that it was very easy for me to land a job in
Newark, whereas it wouldn’t be so easy for someone from
Newark to go and teach at Mt. Olive High School. When I was
there, there were like two Spanish people and one black teacher.
Hopefully it has changed.
The thing
that keeps me successful is the ability to always check myself
and learn from my mistakes. New Jersey is extremely segregated,
this is the home of racial profiling. So in subtle and not
so subtle ways we are constantly bombarded with racist ideology,
and you have to be critical of these messages.
But kids,
no matter who you are and who you are teaching, will always
respect you if they sense you are on their side. And my kids
know that.
As
a writer, much of your poetry is politically motivated. Who
are some of your influences?
I love
Roque Dalton. I feel like we would have been comrades if we
were from the same era. He was a revolutionary from El Salvador,
and very active in the struggle for their liberation. I used
to recite his poem “Poetry like Bread” in Spanish
whenever I was drunk. Mahmoud Darwish, a poet from Palestine,
also breaks my heart. Someone read his most famous poem, “Identity
Card” at a memorial for William Kuntsler and the next
day I was in the library looking him up.
Amina,
Amiri and Ras Baraka had a huge impact on my poetry. Even
though they’re family, their styles are all so different.
Amiri has his roots in Beat poetry, Amina just says it straight
up and Ras is like the poetic voice of the hip hop generation.
When Ras read, well, I am ready to move. Like, where we gonna
go, what we gonna do? He’s just gifted.
Amina
and Amiri had poetry readings in their basement every Saturday
night and it was incredible. People like Jesus Papoleto Melendez,
Piedro Pietri, Sonia Sanchez, members of the Last Poets. I
mean incredible people would be reading in their basement
and my friends and I would be hanging out drinking beer. So
I was really fortunate to have been exposed to them on such
an intimate level.
Do
you write on other non-activist subjects as well?
It’s
easier for me to write about political subjects than it is
for me to write about personal ones. Obviously the two are
linked, but I feel my personal work, about relationships,
myself, my family, it’s always tinged by what is going
on politically. Like it seems almost selfish on some level
to read a poem about being sad and not including some world-shaking
event in it. And that can be dangerous. Women in general have
a tendency to lose themselves in what they are doing. When
I left Newark and came to Jersey City, it was the first time
in 10 years that I wasn’t in an organization or working
on a campaign and I had serious identity issues. Who am I,
what am I doing with my life, what do I want?
I don’t
think that women are socialized to really focus on ourselves
as much as we need to. I think that as I learn to do that
more, I’ll feel more confident in writing about those
topics and reading them.
You will soon leave for Thailand, Cambodia & Vietnam to
create a body of work an exhibit to examine the war in Indochina
40 years later. What inspired you to do this project &
how do you plan to present your experience / work after you
return?
Right
after September 11th, the International Center of Photography
held an exhibit on the Vietnam War through the eyes of the
Vietnamese. At this time, there was a “Let’s get
‘em” attitude permeating the country and the invasion
of Afghanistan was imminent. Seeing the story of people fighting
for their lives against an invader and ultimately winning
was powerful. I felt like it was telling those of us who didn’t
want to retaliate against a nation for the crimes of one organization
that there was hope.
A year
later I took a class with Bruce Franklin, who has published
several books on Vietnam. Franklin argues that the Vietnam
War is perceived as something that happened to the United
States, which is true. Movies like Platoon and Rambo dehumanize
the people of Vietnam. The literature that we studied in his
class was moving, to say the least. I’m really interested
in the survival of the Vietnamese, how they’ve overcome
the attempted decimation of their country. I want to tell
this story.
When
I traveled to Cuba, I spoke at Rutgers University and did
several slide shows at community organizations. I like to
combine the photographs with lectures and will organize some
events at colleges. I won’t exhibit the photographs
in a traditional mat/frame format. The presentation of the
pieces will evolve out of my experience and the culture there.
While there will be an exhibit specifically on these pieces,
I am very excited about doing an exhibit on resistant including
my work from Cuba, Ireland, Newark and Vietnam.
