An Evening with Ruben Martinez

ENG 252

Poets of Color

Reading Response

An Evening with Rueben Martinez

Venus Jones

Ruben Martinez opened up Mills College’s Contemporary Writers Series on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 7pm. He was chosen for Latina/o Heritage Month. 

“I’m the son of a poet.” says Martinez shortly after he questions the lines and architecture of the room, shows gratitude for the lighting on the podium that allows him to read text and places his drink on the floor behind him.  He’s very much in the moment. Dressed in black to prove that he’s obsessed with anarchy. 

“Everyone in El Salvador is born into poetry!” he said jokingly. He was raised on Neruda and his dad worked with photos so, “he had the eye of a poet.” Martinez felt like he came from a “literary cradle.”

He’s far from a conventionalist. He admitted to dropping out of college and wanted to remind us that during that time he felt like the best writing was done “out there” as he pointed to the window with a sense of urgency. Then followed up by saying, “There are many paths to written expression. Some things you prepare for and other things you just do. I know I have something to write about when I become obsessed with something.”  He believes the universe opens up when you decide to look at something in a new light.  The sun can shine on a rock a little different one day and one can be inspired to move to the dessert.

When he got his advance from his publisher he was “broke, broken and on drugs.” Martinez is a tenured professor and has an impressive resume and is currently the artist in residence at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts, an Emmy-award winner and is the co-author of a documentary and three successful books. He also talked about how he wanted to play guitar for us but it didn’t’ work out.  So sharing such personal info seemed easy to him maybe because in this culture it may be expected from self-proclaimed “hipsters” and those artist writer types.

He reads a passage from his big and it begins with “Get the fuck out of my life!” This solidified it for me Martinez is simply a rebel or one not afraid to take risk in his writing and his topics.  Not that dropping the F bomb is unique but he wanted to show his ability to become a different character.  And “The act of representing the other person is a terrible power.”  He stated. The question is:  "Am I bridging the gap between self and others?"

In his latest book Desert America: Boom and Bust in the Old West, the author, brilliantly draws distinct parallels with America and how she sees her close neighbors and how we see each other in our local communities when dramas erupt concerning drugs and violence. We mind our own business because as it says in the book, “We must not feel compassion, love, fear or anything.”