Available for Poetry Recital and Declamation
(merojas@goodseeds.org / 609-313-3194)
Alisados, is an autobiograpy written by Mildred E. Rojas in Spanish. In it, you will find another facet of this rising Latina. English translation is included.
Commentary Notes:
Relaxers (“Alisados”) – "From the collection whose title alludes to the process of relaxing the coarse hair of black and brown woman, Mildred Rojas metaphorically evokes the subjugation implied in this procedure. In many Hispanic Caribbean societies with large Afro-American minority populations, the aesthetics of feminine beauty as defined according to Caucasian norms is invariably imposed on the coarse hair of the Afro-American woman requiring her to follow a dominant model other than her own. Taking this interpretation of beauty as a point of departure, Rojas capably resorts to the feminine fetish of hair as a symbol of racial and gender identity. Accordingly, the texts and poems found in Relaxers speak to the domestication of an element that, for being considered naturally “bad” and unruly, is necessary to control in order to leave docile, calmed and easily manageable.
The relaxing of the hair denotes, in this manner, a process of submission best described as the mistreatment of a subject or object in an effort, not exempt from violence, to make it go contra natura (against its nature). For example, the text titled “Entrance” (the first of several autobiographical vignettes that appear between poems) shows a family scene in which the women of the house (the mother and the aunt) work “against” the hair of the girl who has to look “right”(arreglada) her photo for an American visa. The term “right” (arreglado) in this case implies a variety of concepts that include the modification, the beautification, and the normalization of the girl according to Anglo-Saxon standards that make themselves felt with the force of “iron and fire.” In other poems of the collection, the poetic “I” suggests a futile conflict between “iron and fiber” (Poem 3), one in which, in the end, the weaker of the two elements resists with vehemence and is able to subsist in the face of submission (“the root of my sorrow appears without remedy”, Poem 4).
The poetry of Mildred Rojas challenges the reader to find new and intimate meanings in the expression “to straighten the twisted,” traditionally referring to that which eludes the act of correcting “the bad”. In this case, the poetic “I” accepts “the bad” as that through which the subject identifies itself as other. At the same time this collection of poetry suggests that the supposed correction implied by the practice of relaxing does not consist of a rectifying act, but rather one of oppression. The texts extend the metaphor to other forms of pacification or invalidation ranging from the benevolent words of the father (conciliator and positive aspect) and the ambiguous message of evangelical religion, to the brutality of the ex- husband who despises and reduces.
The value of these texts is in their original approach to the question of identity. By accepting the impossibility of reaching a concrete definition of self (ignorance of the past, confusion of the present, uncertainty of the future), the poetic “I” is then able to recognize its own heterogeneity and “imperfection” and continue its search for creative forms of self-reconciliation."
Carla Giaudrone
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Foreign Languages and Literatures
Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey
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