Peggy Robles Alvarado is an award-winning poet-performer, editor, and educator of Puerto Rican descent.
.Her works have been included in major anthologies of (Afro) Latinx poetry. She has performed in significant Latinx cultural spaces in the city, academia, and media.
.She is a Lukumi and Palo Priestess, and her work addresses Afro-Indigenous diasporic cultures and cosmologies.
.Peggy is continuously generating and supporting original thought-provoking women-centered literary events that provide a platform for emerging artists through Robleswrites Productions Inc.
Icebreaker Practice
- Read the poem “My Spanglish” by Peggy Robles Alvarado.
- Select a verse or a concise section of the poem that you think is impactful or perhaps you feel connected to.
- Answer these questions on an index card: How do you relate to the experience described by the poet? Do you have a similar or different view regarding the relationship between language and culture? How do you think this poem anticipates this class’s discussions and aesthetic explorations?
One of the ways Juan Francisco Manzano use his creativity to escape the horror imposed by La Marquesa Del Prado Ameno is through folding, painting and cutting papers. He will share these puppets he made with paper with other slave children and see how these lifeless puppets dance “lively”. Another way he escape reality is through imagination. He will imagine having poetry competitions with famous poets and winning them, he says,
“a man is my friend
when he only uses the first part
calling me Poet
not Slave.”
Using this imagination that he is not a slave and is equal to poets is a way he figured to throw away his identity as a slave.
Dreaming is another mechanism he does when he is trapped and punished. He will be dreaming about things that meant freedom, his mother and brothers, people on the streets, and the wind,
“they are free
so am I
more or less.”