Liberation is Lit Podcast

You Have to Survive with Brandy del Río

• Tayler Simon • Season 2 • Episode 1

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In this episode of the Liberation is Lit podcast, we sit down with Latina poet and author Brandy Del Río to discuss the transformative power of poetry and storytelling. We explore themes of feminism, Latin history, and the impact of cultural heritage in writing. Del Río shares insights into her creative process, the challenges faced while compiling her poetry collection 'I Thought We Were Post Me Too,' and the importance of using one's voice as a form of protest. Tune in for a compelling discussion on the role of art in social change and the significance of storytelling in preserving cultural identity. 


00:00 Welcome to Liberation is Lit

00:17 Meet Brandy Del Rio

00:56 Discussing Poetry and Themes

06:46 Challenges in Compiling the Collection

08:57 Using Poetry as Protest

15:33 Empowering the Next Generation

19:06 Where to Find Brandy's Work

20:21 Closing Remarks and Contact Information


Brandy’s Book

I Thought We Were Post MeToo


Where to Find Brandy

bdrwrites.com

@BDRWrites on IG and Tik Tok 

Thank you for being part of the Liberation is Lit podcast! If you have stories to share, want to suggest topics, or just want to connect, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @liberationislit or visit our website at liberationislit.com. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review! Remember, your voice matters, and together, through the lens of stories, we're making a difference in the world.

Tayler Simon:

Hey y'all, welcome to the Liberation is Lit podcast, where the power of storytelling meets the force of social change. I'm your host, Tayler Simon, and in this podcast, we believe in the profound impact of stories. And I am super stoked to be here with my good friend, Brandy Del Rio. And we're going to talk about poetry and being subversive with our art. And this is, we're recording this the day after the Super Bowl with Kendrick Lamar's performance. So, that may bleed into our conversation. We just had a whole discussion before recording of this. But, hey Brandy, welcome!

Brandy:

Hey, hey, Tayler. What's up? No, I'm still hype. I'm still hype about that. Like halftime performance. But yeah, yes.

Tayler Simon:

Yes! So, to kick us off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a writer and what inspires you to write poetry?

Brandy:

Okay. So, let's see. I am very proudly a Latina, poet, author, because I do write short stories, but I did recently, release a, collection of poetry entitled, I thought we were post metoo. I keep looking over here, but here's the book. And like, I thought we were post metoo because clearly we haven't really learned a lot from the first movement. But it's okay. It comes in waves. It's okay. And we're here. It's okay.

Tayler Simon:

So, can you tell us a little bit about, your process of putting together the book, which you can get from liberationislit. com. I will post the link in the show description if you want to get the book. But can you tell us a little bit about your approach to selecting the poems for the collection? Were there any themes or messages that you especially aimed to convey? I mean, you know, aside from, thinking we were Post Me Too. Thank you.

Brandy:

I say that, well, I entitled the book that, because I mean, clearly we're, we're still learning from it, but we haven't, learned all of the things that we need to, especially for, how many waves of feminism have we gone through? Like it's, it's ridiculous, but anyway, and, and we have, you know, a mock fascist that it, You know, the, at, you know, at control of the, of the rain, so to speak, but I mean, that's. So choosing the poems for this, it actually goes way back, some, some of these poems, I probably wrote maybe, maybe 10 years ago, but you know, after I guess, reading so many books of poetry and learning, at the end of the day, like, you know, edit, editing is my best friend. And sometimes it stinks, it sucks when you have to cut certain lines out. But editing is your best friend, especially when you're as long winded as I am. I, I write very, epic poetry. It's, it's, it's fairly long, but it normally does serve a purpose and it's, it delivers a message. Most of my poetry does center on themes of Latin history. Just being a person growing up, the daughter of a, an immigrant. My father was from Mexico. I speak a lot of Spanish, Qué tal, what's up? I'm so proud of that Latin back history and I'm just so proud of all of that stuff and most of. The, the poetry that I do write is fairly, it's, it's not fiction in that, it is based on my experiences as a person, but for the most part, they do, they do tell a story of where I come from and why we are it. attempts to explain why we are, we do certain things. So I recently filmed a delivery of the poem, entitled Growing Up. You know, growing up the daughter of an immigrant. And in that one, it touches on my, my history, my father, who's now deceased, but also it, it goes beyond that in that we, we talk about like, Latin history, as in, you know, I'm Mexican American, but we're from Mestizo, the Mestizo race. We, we came from, quote unquote, La Malinche, and that's really, that's really, important to me to touch on that because she's such a, I guess, controversial figure in Mexican American history. In Mexican history, her name was Donia Marina, but she has a long history she could be looked at as a, a person who gave up the entire. Mexican, race, like she, she just gave up her people for, a spot next to, Hernán Cortés who is colonizer. Um, but I mean, what can we do? So I touched on a lot of different topics, but for the most part, it's all, it's all to tell a story.

Tayler Simon:

I really appreciate you talking about like back to the roots of a controversial woman, because I feel like in all cultures, it's always the woman's fault for doing something. And I feel like that ties into the story of, I thought we were post me too, of women being the villains and trying to be out here ruining men's lives and I feel like just too in the culture of brown sexual assault. Especially with communities of color, it's all about putting our people before ourselves, even though our people didn't protect us, but we're still expected to protect them and return. And I feel like that all goes together. And aside from editing, can you talk about any challenges you might have faced while compiling the collection and how you overcame them?

Brandy:

Haha, um, yeah, so, I actually lost my first manuscript, for this book. And I, thank God I had like a bunch of, stuff by a bunch. I mean, like, lots of poems, backed up to a flash drive that I had, for many years. I just went back and tweaked a lot of those, and had to do that. So, technical difficulties were, a bit of a, an issue with this one. But, for, I, Yeah, I came back. I mean, when you have something to say, you kind of, you can rein it back in and like, figure out how to work around the problems., especially with this, topic, well, this book, the various topics that I do touch on. They're so important to me. There's like everything that I'm talking about is so important to me. And all the stories that I'm telling, whether, you know, they be like historical or just like themes of, xenophobia, all of the things. If they're important to you, you will find a way. So I certainly saw that, manifest itself when I was, writing this one.

Tayler Simon:

And, I feel like what you said earlier about how you tell a story and how your poetry collection is very much you. And that's what I really love about poetry in general, is that it's a very personalized experience, but how when people read and engage with it, it's a very universal experience. So, I love that you talk about how, culture , plays a role in this conversation. And so I would love to ask, how do you use your voice and your poetry and your writing in general as a way of protest during these especially difficult times?

Brandy:

yes, big exhale just because it's a very trying, period. It stinks, because like you, you still, you have to survive. And I, there are two voices specifically that I'm thinking of that are constantly like, Oh, you have to survive. You have to survive. Like it doesn't matter. It's okay. Just yesterday I was listening to this. It was, it was a podcast. No, not, not a podcast. It was. It was some recording and, it was telling me basically to shut the fuck up. When you get impassioned, shut the fuck up, but no, when, when you get impassioned about something and you have something to talk about and speak up for, that's when you have to move, mobilize and keep, put, you know, more emphasis on your voice. On what you're saying, your message, and try to just be heard, I have recently with this book, started reading, reading some of the poems, but like reading them and recording the videos and putting them on my social media, my Instagram. And, because I don't, yeah, I'm done with Facebook, but Instagram definitely, even though it's still meta, darn it, we can't escape them. But like, you know, what, when you have something to say, like, shoot, say it, but say it with like, with, with your chest, you know, so to speak, say it with your chest and. Say it loud. It took too long for me to grow up and feel comfortable with the voice that I have, and I have a big mouth, admittedly so, but At the same time, I'm not just gonna I'm not just going to hear something and say, okay, that's right. Like, like that person. Oh, Brandy's got a big mouth. We should kill her. Like, no, like, I'm gonna fight for my, you know, life at the end of it. There's so many things that we have To fight for and whether it be political, culturally, like, you know, so many things are happening historically, like socially, and it hurts at, at a certain point, but you got, you still got to keep on doing it. Like, like, I keep, I keep exhaling so heavily, but it's part of my therapy in that this is how I deal through breath, through breathing, through just exhaling all the shit that's thrown at me. I don't accept shit. So like, why am I, why, why would I keep on just, just accepting the shit on a silver platter? Like, no, I'm not going to do that. We keep speaking and we keep fighting for the things that are necessary. Like just the other day I was talking to, I was, having to lecture. Well, not, not like sure it's more like, tenderly. delivering a message to my niece about how she's Mexican American, despite what her, because she's, biracial. She, my brother and my brother is very, whitewashed Mexican, but it's okay. Yeah, that's, that's part of him and that person that he's become. But, , also he went through the military and, like, They're, they're not exactly accepting of, all colors that, that's what I hear. That's what I hear. I can't, you know, I'm not, an authority on this subject, he, had kids with a white woman, well, I mean, I got two beautiful little kids, you know, out of, out of the deal. But I had to, pretty much tell her, Hey, Ava, you're Mexican American, you're still Mexican, right? You're, you might not be from the Mexico, but. You are very proudly Mexican American. We just had to have the talk. And I will keep reminding that little kid, even if she keeps fighting, cause she, she's got that gump. You know, she's got the, the fighting gene. I mean, but that's the thing. We have to teach, the next generation, the, the generations that are coming up behind us. The ones that we care about, tell them, teach them about the stuff that is actively being, you know, just, just written out of the history books, like those things. It is so important to keep that, those stories alive,

Tayler Simon:

definitely agree. And it's interesting that when you talk about you got to survive, how the video or the recording that you watched or listened to, Was saying survival is through silence and how you believe survival is through speaking up and sharing stories. And I think that is so important to distinguish because a lot of, especially people of color, they want to believe that, our survival is rooted in our silence and it's. the opposite And I think it was Zora Neale Hurston who, who says like, you have to speak up or they'll kill you and say you liked it. And so I definitely want to ask what advice that you have for listeners that may be of the next generation that may be just getting empowered to use their voice with other generations, older generations. How would you advise them to make an impact in their communities?

Brandy:

go out, get involved in, in anything that's available to you. Don't be that person. That's just, that's just sitting back and turning, turning to the, the message boards and, and leaving stuff there. Like, no, that, that, That's not how things get done. And if you're a woman, even more so because we, like historically women have always been the backbones of social movements, you know, it's no, well, I'm, I, I'm not an authority, but like, you know, I, I know with the African American, like leagues, legions, whatever you want to call them. It was women, it was women who were organizing behind the scenes and like, maybe men were put on the, pulpits because they had a strong, you know, quote unquote, a stronger voice, they had more power in. whatever it might be. Yeah. It's the same thing with like the, the Chicano movement with, my Mexican American brothers. Brother in like that came before me. Yeah. Yeah. Cesar Chavez was wonderful. He was a great guy, but you know what? Like there were so many women behind him who pushed him up they're always going to be there and they're always going to be helping or whether it be boxing lunches or writing out the manifestos. It doesn't matter what you're doing, at least you're doing something for the movement. And if you're passionate about it, keep doing it. Keep doing it because it's pushing your, the people that you care for to the, to the front of the line where you would like to be, you know, and it doesn't mean that you're being left out. It means that you're helping, helping someone else. Helping is so, is so important for, especially people of color, like everybody's got to put, you know, keep, put their hand in the cookie jar and be part of it. It doesn't happen with one single person. It's so important to just, Go out and be part of something bigger than you, and be okay with being just a small part. Because we're not all supposed to be giants. Some, some of us have to be the little ants in, in the piles who are helping with other things. But that's okay, you're still part of the fucking movement, you know?

Tayler Simon:

Yes, we all are part of the movement and we'll even if we're little ants when we get together we become giants. So exactly. Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. Where can people find you and find those poetry pieces that you recorded?

Brandy:

Yeah. So once again, this is my book. I thought we were posting to you can find it wherever you get your literature, your poetry books, whatnot. My name is Brandy del Rio, and I am a proud Latina woman., just just. I'm here, I have an Instagram account. It is called at BDR writes And you can also find me at my website. That's called, www.bdrwrites.com. And that's, that's me. That's, you can find everything that I'm doing. I have some events coming up. I have some signings and I'm still gonna be writing. It doesn't matter because we still have a lot of work to do.

Tayler Simon:

Right. And when they take away our platforms, we just build our own. Yes. Well, thank you so much again, Brandy, for being on the podcast. And if any listeners have any stories that they want to share, want to suggest any topics, or just want to connect with us, you can find us on Instagram, unfortunately, all the meta sites. It's at liberation is lit or our website liberation is lit. com. And if you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review and remember your voice matters and together through the lens of stories, we're going to make a difference in the world until next time.

Brandy:

Bye guys.