Kneading Poetry

This weeks poems present how the act of food and intimacy can be used by queer Latin American women as a way to use traditional spaces and acts, such as making food, as a way to express themselves within and contrary to heterosexual expectations and prejudice. The poem that stood out the most to me, was Moro-Gronlier’s Compulsion: A Chronology, as the structure has a very specific syntactic structure, with each final line ending in a determiner phrase. The first six stanzas end in a first person singular pronoun (I, My) while the eighth and ninth stanzas end in a third person singular pronoun (He), with the final tenth stanza regaining the first person singular pronoun (I). The way that Moro-Gronlier structures this poem with the determiner phrases switching between a first person and then third person and finally first person again, gives the interpretation that the male heterosexual relationships that Moro-Gronlier describes takes away the joy and freedom that she experienced in her childhood and with feminine relationships, with food and intimacy and only when she takes back that intimacy with food and sexuality does she partly regain that freedom, but not completely.

I find the terminology that Moreno-Gronlier provides in the preface to her collection to be useful when analyzing the relationship between queerness and food within Latin American patriarchal societies. While the origins of the word “tortillera” may originally have been used as a a means to attack lesbian women, within Latino/Latinx communities, the imagery behind the word is also why it has been reclaimed by queer women. Since the space of making tortillas in the Latin American household was occupied by women, and is a space for women to gather, it is easy to see why the idea of a space and occupation created for women, could be used as a way for self-expression by queer and lesbian women. In Gaspar de Alba’s poem Making Tortillas, she uses the description of making tortillas to show  how intimacy can be created through shared touch. The descriptions of soaking and grinding the maize are woven between the act of spreading our the maize over the metate, which requires the use of the tortillera’s strength and entire body to create the tortilla, which could represent how Latin American queer and lesbian women show strength against societal prejudice, or how commitment to the lengthy process of making tortillas is similar to the creation and sustaining queer relationships.

2 thoughts on “Kneading Poetry

  1. Hola David,

    I think the reclaiming of the term tortillera is so vital to both of these poems. I really enjoyed the poem “Making Tortillas” and loved how Gaspar de Alba really reclaimed that space and made it her own. She weaved queer sexuality with the making of tortillas so flawlessly. There is no distinction of when she is talking about making tortillas or her own relationships. It was such a beautiful rejection of a society that was painting queer relationships as something other, outside. As she used a normalized household activity, she was normalizing her relationships and the relationships of all especially those part of the lesbian community. This poem is so empowering and incredibly written.

  2. Hola David!!
    (I really loved the title of this post. I thought it was very clever.)
    I had not thought of the use of tenses in the Chronology poem and thought it was quite interesting how you connected it back to male heterosexual relationships was interesting and something I certainly had not thought of! After reading you’re comment i went back and read the poem again and noticed too how when the narrator bring in the “he” it sees more like she has been consumed by him, and has gotten caught up in what sounds like her deceiving him/ deceiving herself. The line that stood out to me the most was “He mistakes the sweet rush of sugar glowing in my eyes for devotion.” It clearly shows she feels misunderstood and as you said like the joy and freedom she experienced has been taken away.
    ~Sofia

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