By Melissa Wasserman
Rigoberto GonzÃĦlez's Mexican identity comes across and queer identity is written down, but his newest book of poetry, Our Lady of the Crossword, is not an unsolvable puzzle.
The author explores queer identity's complexities in Mexico and the United States as well as the border that unites the two countries. This theme reflects from the front cover art to the last page, while memory fuels his writing.
"Mexico is a big part of my consciousness and this is my imagination," GonzÃĦlez said. "I look at my writing as a way of looking back at the country [Mexico] to what it could be; to the times that it was a place of wonder and a place of magic. I think it still lives, but it's hard for us to see that through what's happening to the country right now."
GonzÃĦlez was born in Bakersfield, California, and raised in Michoacan, Mexico. Coming from a family of migrant farm workers, he grew up aware of his Mexican heritage and developed a strong work ethic. As a child in the '80s, he moved to southern Calif. with his family. Eventually, his family moved back to Mexico and as a young adult, GonzÃĦlez stayed on his own to pursue his own life path.
GonzÃĦlez was the first in his family to graduate from high school and college. His grandparents were illiterate, while his parents had elementary-school education, barely knowing how to read or write. With the desire to further his own educational experience, GonzÃĦlez forged his grandmothers signature—the only thing she knew how to write—to fill out college applications, which required a guardian's signature.
As an 18-year-old, he spent his undergraduate years at University of California Riverside. This was a decision he made on his own. He told his grandmother the week before he left for school and his father and grandfather the day he left to go, saying it was the only way to do it without anyone's input and skepticism.
"I am the person I am because of what my family did for me and what they did not do for me," said GonzÃĦlez. "Writing came to me not that long afterward because I was such a reader looking for answers in books and books were also a way to help me understand about my sexuality. Nobody in my family was out and the Mexican culture is notoriously homophobic. All these things made me understand that books mattered, that writing stories and our narratives matter."
Since then, he has earned graduate degrees and made the big move to New York City, where he said felt at home, realizing it was a place of immigrants. Currently, he resides in Queens. He is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine and a professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey.
"For me, it's an opportunity to make sense of the world I live in," said Gonzalez of his passion for writing. "It's a very complicated world I live in—a very difficult world I live in—certainly as a gay man and my journey as somebody who comes from a family background where education wasn't a priority or wasn't even an option."
GonzÃĦlez has authored 15 books of poetry and prose, including So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, Other Fugitives and Other Strangers, Unpeopled Eden and his memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa.
He is the recipient of a number of fellowships, grants and awards. His most recent poetry collection, Unpeopled Eden, won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
GonzÃĦlez described Our Lady of the Crossword, which is published by A Midsummer Night's Press and comes out June 15, as a "recognition of a portrait of gay, Mexican identity and all its complexities," containing stories of sadness and triumph.
"I just want to bring something more complicated to the mix, so the couple of poems in there about young or even older gay Mexican men finding peace and love and comfort in their identity," said GonzÃĦlez. "People really imagine the gay body or gay sex as something to be feared and I wondered what if I write a book in which that kind of activity is seen as something desirable, positive, [and] something beautiful."
This book, he emphasized, depicts a shift from his previous works, namely, Other Fugitives and Other Strangers, which he wrote in his 20s. The shift, he said, is maturity. Admitting he used to obsess over things such as relationships, jobs and identity and suffer from anxieties and insecurities in his younger years, now he has come to terms with many parts of his life, including his gay identity.
"What I'm creating is a record of my thinking and my imagination and my curiosity," GonzÃĦlez said. "Everything was so tragic about queer identity and I think a lot of that has to do with my upbringing and coming to terms with where I come from. Now, as a gay man writing in my 40s, I see things very differently. ... I just wanted to pay homage to that—to the narrative of the gay Mexican that not only is able to push through the obstacles, but also celebrate themselves in the process."
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