EP 7 Julia de Burgos - The People's Poet | Women And Resistance

In this episode, the hosts Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. and Adesoji Iginla delve into the life and legacy of Julia de Burgos, an influential Afro-Puerto Rican poet and activist. 

They explore her struggles with identity, her literary contributions, and her political activism, emphasising the importance of her work in the context of colonialism and social justice. 

The conversation highlights the intersection of art and activism, the role of the press, and the personal reflections on belonging and healing. 

The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to embrace their paths and fight for justice.

Takeaways

*Julia de Burgos was a pioneering Afro-Puerto Rican poet and activist.
*Her poetry addressed themes of identity, colonialism, and social justice.
*De Burgos faced significant personal and societal challenges throughout her life.
*She advocated for the rights of Puerto Ricans and other marginalised communities.
*Her work continues to inspire contemporary discussions on race and identity.
*The role of the press in activism is crucial for social change.
*Personal healing and spiritual repair are essential for activists.
*De Burgos's legacy is celebrated through various cultural and literary tributes.
*The importance of embracing one's unique path in life.
*Art and activism are intertwined in the fight for justice.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Julia de Burgos
01:22 The Life and Legacy of Julia de Burgos
06:41 Struggles and Triumphs: A Poet's Journey
10:30 Activism and Identity in New York
15:34 The Role of Art in Political Consciousness
19:48 Exploring Racial Identity and Colonialism
25:21 Loneliness and the Need for Spiritual Repair
26:23 The Power of Writing in Adversity
27:11 Exploring Identity and Gender Roles
28:53 Choosing One's Own Path
30:12 The Role of the Press in Society
33:58 Reflections on Legacy and Recognition
38:34 The Journey of a Poet
43:37 Embracing Loneliness and Spiritual Repair

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:01.836)
Yes, greetings, greetings and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am a co-host Adesogyi Igilla and with me as usual is my sister from another mother, Aya Fubera Eneli Esquire. Or today, she is Julia de Bogos. Welcome sister.

Adesoji Iginla (00:27.788)
Yes, interesting that we're going to the island of Puerto Rico to learn about the lives and times of your good self. And first, and what would you like to tell us about Julia?

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:58.681)
I suppose I would like to start.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05.753)
by thanking you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13.333)
this time with you and your guests and I would like to share

I wrote. It can be found in this volume, Song of the Simple Truth, which is actually a compilation of all my poems. It's fairly thick.

So I will start there.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:01.465)
My poetry was written in Spanish and subsequently translated. I did to English and to other languages. I did speak both Spanish and English. And in English, this poem is titled, To Julia de Burgos. Of course, we would say, to Julia de Burgos.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy. Because they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice.

Because you are the dressing and the essence is me. And the most profound abyss is spread between us. You are the cold doll of social lies and me the viral star bust of the human truth. You honey of Cartesian hypocrisies.

Not me. In all my poems, I undress my heart. You are like your world, selfish. Not me, who gambles everything, betting on what I am. You are only the ponderous lady, very lady. Not me. I am life, strength.

woman.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:06.25)
You belong to your husband, your master. Not me. I belong to nobody or all because to all, to all, I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thoughts. You curl your hair and paint yourself. Not me.

The wind curls my hair. The sun paints me. You are a housewife, resigned, submissive, tied to the prejudices of men. Not me. Umbridled. I'm a runaway Rocinante, snorting horizons of God's justice.

You in yourself have no say. Everyone governs you. Your husband, your parents, your family. The priest, the dressmaker, the theater, the dance hall, the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne, heaven and hell, and the social. What will they say?

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:33.653)
Not me. Not in me. In me, only my heart governs. Only my thoughts. Who governs in me is me. You, flower of aristocracy. And me, flower of the people. You, in you have everything and you owe it to everyone. While me,

My nothing I owe to no-

You nailed to the static ancestral dividend and me a one in the numerical social divider. We are the dual to death who fatally approaches. When the multitudes run rioting, leaving behind ashes of burned injustices.

And with the torch of the seven virtues, the multitudes run after the seven sins against you and against everything unjust and inhuman.

will be in their midst with a torch in my hand.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:56.952)
Who am I? Julia DeBorgos?

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:04.772)
Some would describe me as a legend, an icon.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:12.302)
But tonight, I want you and your listeners, your viewers.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:22.414)
to see me, the human, the woman, the one who dared to own herself.

paid a dear but necessary price for it. Because of what use is it to live for everyone and to lose yourself?

and how many of you are owned still today by your social order.

Unable. Unwilling.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:06.83)
pay the price to be uniquely you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:15.288)
part of the legend.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:20.952)
I from very...

or some would call destitute.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:34.468)
upbringing. I was born on February 17th, 1949, 1914 in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:52.333)
I died.

in New York City at the age of 39.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:05.284)
So what does this woman who lived short of four decades, what does she have to say to you? Why am I worth studying my words?

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:21.912)
worth pouring over and thinking through and understanding at a deeper level.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:32.484)
I was one of 13 children.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:39.588)
Six of my family members, my siblings to be exact, did not live to adulthood.

They died of malnutrition, starvation. Yes, in a world where there is so much, so much, where some too few have so much that they just discard without a second thought.

My parents buried six of their 13 children.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:27.82)
I suppose. Given.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:34.296)
This start in life, it would not be a stretch to understand my sensitivity to loss.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:47.8)
and my understanding of social precarity.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:54.038)
My mother, Paula Garcia, was an Afro-Puerto Rican.

father Francisco Brugio Hans, Farmed in rural Carolina.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:19.0)
despite.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:23.884)
My very humble beginnings. I excelled academically.

and I eventually won a scholarship to University High School. And I completed my teaching credentials at the University of Puerto Rico in 1933.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:55.737)
I began my career as a teacher.

and then I married.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:07.116)
And back then, there was an understanding that married women then leave the workforce to be devoted to their husbands and their families. I grew up in a very conservative part of Rico, very much shaped by colonialism and patriarchy.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:33.016)
When I would not give up my teaching job, I was fired.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:48.16)
I married Ruben Rodriguez Bochamp in 1934. That union, as we call it, ended in divorce in 1937.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:11.47)
Contemporary writers, reading through my letters and my essays and my poems, describe the marriage as unhappy and note that the fact that I had begun political organizing even at that age.

and I had began literary tours made the partnership increasingly incompatible.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:50.541)
What is it about a coming into her own that makes her unfit for marriage?

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:05.028)
by the time I was 25 years old.

I had published Poema en Viente Circos and I toured the island giving readings.

By 1939, I published my second volume and I self-published all of these volumes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:31.416)
My second volume was Cancion de la verdad, Senzilla.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:50.39)
in the early 40s.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:58.318)
for a number of reasons, including the fact that

Though I loved my homeland, Puerto Rico, and would spend my life fighting for the nationhood of Puerto Rico.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:17.314)
My homeland demanded a version of me that I could not be.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:25.528)
I moved to Cuba.

and I studied there as well before I also moved to New York.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:43.748)
passionate relationship with Juan Isidro Jimenez-Grullon.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:53.708)
that relationship ended.

again a life not becoming of the conservative Puerto Rican I was meant to be or they thought I was meant to be.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:11.96)
later married musician Armando Marlene.

and we divorced in 1947.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:24.972)
In between those times, I immersed myself in the life of an Afro Latina in New York. Some would call me a New Yorker.

This was towards the end of the Harlem Renaissance.

and I was greatly influenced by writers, some of whom I read, never met, many of whom I met as well.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:00.5)
I became a columnist and eventually an editor at Pueblis Hispanos, the Hispanic people in New York. It was considered a communist paper by the FBI.

Adesoji Iginla (17:20.546)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:23.49)
and even amongst the rank and file of.

Adesoji Iginla (17:26.382)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:29.582)
those who worked on that paper, I was considered even a little radical.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:41.881)
The goals of our paper at the time were quite frankly ahead of where we were in terms of what we were fighting for. We promoted pan-Hispanic unity.

Adesoji Iginla (17:57.869)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:06.304)
Our goal was to bring together Spanish-speaking communities in New York, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Haitians.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:20.696)
This again was not in keeping with the colonial ideas.

of the elitist Puerto Ricans.

who sought to separate themselves from their African roots and to whiten the race, if you will.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:49.752)
But we understood that we needed to have this pan-Hispanic unity, a shared cultural and political front. Of course, this was very threatening to the powers that be.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:07.3)
founded during World War II, we aligned ourselves with struggles against fascism abroad and colonialism at home. I suppose today we would be considered Antifa.

Adesoji Iginla (19:23.916)
Antifascist.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:27.468)
And when the term Antifa is used, most people don't even think long enough to understand that it means anti-fascist. And is that such a horrible thing to be?

Adesoji Iginla (19:31.64)
and

Adesoji Iginla (19:35.032)
precious.

Adesoji Iginla (19:39.256)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:41.785)
We gave voice to the Puerto Rican diaspora. We served as a platform for Puerto Rican migrants in New York to express their struggles, their struggles against racism, against poverty, and displacement. And I knew all of those ills on an intimate level.

I struggled with instability, moving from place to place. Sometimes boarding houses, trying to keep a roof over my head.

At one time, I worked for the federal government.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:34.946)
They came after me because of my poetry. They said it was not, they could not read it as just my personal views that these were political acts. And so they came after me with a hatch.

an act that they seemingly have forgotten today as you glorify a fascist as your president.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:17.11)
In the paper, I published essays, I wrote about news, and I also published some of my poetry that affirmed identity and art dignity.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:33.945)
The paper also served as a cultural forum. It mixed politics with art, published literature, commentary on theater, and as I already noted, poetry and essays as well. And back then, of course we did not have the technology you have today, the iPhones or the Twitter or the Google or the TikTok.

We read papers, those who were literate read the papers to others. And that is how we got our news and that is how we thought through the issues of our time. We aimed to redefine Latino identity in the US and beyond and to get beyond the stereotypes that still inflame the imagination of the average American.

Hence your wars against us.

your unleashing of ICE agents against my community, even today. We showcased our intellectual, artistic, and our activism. We showcased everything we had. But we didn't just stop there. We mobilized workers and communities.

And what does fascism hate? Almost more than anything else?

Adesoji Iginla (23:10.528)
Organizing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:14.968)
We advocated for labor rights, for social justice, and educational opportunities for Spanish-speaking communities in New York. Our articles often urged readers to engage in organizing and in political activism. We would most definitely have been telling them not to vote for the very one who would come for their livelihoods.

Adesoji Iginla (23:43.128)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:44.825)
Where is the so-called free press today? Who has carried on the mantle? Who took the baton and is continuing the race in the way that we did?

My columns often centered women and identity and independence.

much to the chagrin again of those who would rather see patriarchy ruin, ruin us as it ran us.

Pueblos Hispanos merged my poetry with journalism, making art a tool for political consciousness. Where are our artists today? How are we fighting back?

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:51.364)
Thank

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:01.518)
through all of these travails.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:07.054)
fighting for the nationhood of Puerto Rico, struggling to keep food in my belly and a roof over my head, sometimes carrying my belongings on my own back.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:29.454)
found love at times and I lost love.

almost all the time. I did have one love though who never deserted me and that's my sister Consuelo. She was a sister and she was a mother. Consuelo helped to raise me.

I would write letters back and forth with Consuelo, sharing my heart with her.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:09.784)
And in some of my darkest times, Consuelo would ask me to come back home, to return to the land of my birth.

Adesoji Iginla (26:20.769)
All

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:26.752)
What version of me could go back and live in Puerto Rico?

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:36.676)
Do you know that I was held up as an example of why Puerto Ricans should stay on their land and not go to foreign lands? Yes, certainly the United States. Look what is happening to her. Look how she can't stay married. Look how she has no children. Look how she does not.

Adesoji Iginla (26:49.832)
United States.

Adesoji Iginla (26:58.958)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:17.528)
What version of me, tail tucked between my legs, could have returned to Puerto Rico and what life?

could I have built there.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:34.724)
towards the end of my life. I was in and out of hospitals.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:45.794)
I was so isolated, the loneliness consuming me, not withstanding so many that I did work with.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:59.525)
So many names that you may know, like Juan Antonio Cortaga, Carlos Quinos, Jesus Colon, the Puerto Rican writer in New York, pioneer of the New York literary tradition, Jorge Luis Chenere, Clara Lair, Puerto Rican poets and intellectuals who occasionally published in the same networks.

Pedro Alvizu Campos, who although he was in Puerto Rico most of the time, he was the nationalist party leader whose ideas strongly influenced me. As a matter of fact, when I was in Puerto Rico, I became the secretary general of the Daughters of Freedom.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:51.618)
I worked with Jesus Maria Lugo Lago, the activist and journalist connected to Puerto Rico leftist circles, even the language we use, leftist. Do you know the origin of this notion of left and right and why you use it, why it's weaponized today?

Adesoji Iginla (29:11.96)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:14.476)
I consorted with Spanish Civil War exiles and anti-fascist writers, Cuban, Spanish, Dominican intellectuals who had fled Franco and Trujillo. They often intersected with my community.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:37.028)
I'm Puerto Rican. I'm Afro-Latina. I'm New Yorker.

Adesoji Iginla (29:47.566)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:49.612)
I worked with Nicolás Amor, Clemente Soto Velez, Bernardo Vega.

He was part of an earlier generation in which my work circulated. And of course, I worked with.

Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, other so-called leftist artists, Pan-American networks of poets and musicians. I was a part.

of a community of radical intellectuals, but the thing that you have to understand is that even in this community, you can also feel very much ostracized by the everyday people who are concerned that interacting with you will bring unwanted attention to them.

Adesoji Iginla (30:48.43)
down.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:53.09)
When you know you are being surveilled by the FBI and my files are still not completely open to the public, much of what's in the public sphere is heavily redacted.

It makes people wary of you. It makes you wary of people.

I would like to share some more of my poetry with you, if I may.

Adesoji Iginla (31:25.346)
Please do, please do.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:28.258)
And this one, because I was a rather, what would you all call it today? Light-skinned Afro-Latina, but I was always clear about my African heritage and I was never ashamed of it. I embraced all parts of me.

This poem in English is titled, Ayayayay of the Kinky Haired Negress.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:05.79)
Aye, aye, aye, that I'm kinky haired and pure black. Kinks in my hair, kaffir on my lips, and my flat nose, moles and beaks. Black of pure tint, I cry and laugh the vibration of being a black statue. A chunk of night in which my white teeth are lightning and to be a black vine which entwines in the black.

and curves the black nest in which the raven lies. Black chunk of black in which I sculpt myself. Ay, ay, ay, my statue is all black. They tell me that my grandfather was the slave for whom the master paid 30 coins. Ay, ay, ay, that the slave was my grandfather is my sadness.

is my sadness. If he had been the master, it would be my shame. That in men as a nation, if being the slave is having no rights, being the master is having no conscience. Ay, ay. Wash the sins of the white king in forgiveness, black queen.

Aye, aye, the race escapes me and buzzes and flies toward the white race to sink in its clear water or perhaps the white will be shadowed in the black. Aye, aye, aye, my black race flees and with the white runs to become bronzed to be one for the future.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:14.294)
Much of my work was multi-dimensional. I did not fit neatly into any box. And like I read in my very first poem, there were these dueling Julias. The Julias that society wanted me to be in order to survive, in order to thrive, in order to be seen as a success, in order to be seen as worthy of being Puerto Rican.

Julia, who defied all definitions and who chose to be me. I challenged colorism, social rewards for lightness. I exposed how colonial hierarchies survive in taste, in hiring, in schools, and in the media.

and owe to my eternal sadness how they still survive today.

I offered a counter aesthetic where blackness is the measure of dignity, not a trait to hide.

We should lift our heads up.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:40.824)
The ones who should hang their heads in shame are the colonizers, the slave masters and mistresses. The ones who are so inhumane, they deny the humanity of others.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:59.191)
in one of my poems Rio Grande de Louisa.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:06.018)
I evoke river imagery, land, history, and identity under US rule. And how is it that Puerto Rico is still a colony of the United States of America?

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:24.236)
Seemingly we have made no progress in becoming a free people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:35.074)
The river functions as a living archive. It remembers indigenous presence, Spanish conquest, slavery, and the daily life of Afro-Puerto Ricans, our communities along the banks. The river is at once a lover, a witness, and a mirror.

where the speaker's body and the island's body meets.

This fusion in my poem makes personal emotion inseparable from national history. I am Puerto Rico.

I still bear.

the marks of colonialism.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:34.678)
we still bear them today. Under U.S. rule, the river also figures in the sense of dependency and extraction. Who controls land, water, labor? Who controls memory?

my people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:05.088)
ravaged by a hurricane.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:10.436)
clamoring for electricity and water and the bare necessities of life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:18.338)
While an orange

I wouldn't dignify him to call him an orangutan because they have empathy and compassion. Throws.

paper towels at us like we are wild animals.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:44.536)
And we do not walk out.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:57.016)
Who controls the memory?

In this poem, I ask the river to cleanse and to testify.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:10.166)
In this poem, I enact a politics of belonging, tying identity to place rather than to the empire that governs it.

I insist that the natural world register colonial violence, but also register care.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:35.094)
I insist that the river imagine decolonization as both environmental and spiritual repair.

Ay, yai, yai.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:54.5)
Spiritual repair.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:59.055)
Can I tell you of the loneliness?

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:05.592)
the loneliness that flowed in my body like

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:13.368)
the loneliness that.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:18.532)
tightened my joints like arthritis.

Can I tell you about the loneliness and the despair that drove me into a deep depression that I could not figure out how to emerge from? Can I tell you about a depression that had me looking?

for some respite in the bottom, bottom of a bottle of alcohol.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:51.118)
Can I tell you about an icon ravaged by alcoholism?

This brilliant poet.

whom you celebrate today.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:10.18)
Can I tell you that my story is not unique?

and that amongst you today are many walking in your midst like I once did. And you see what you want to see.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:30.756)
but you don't look deeply enough.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:35.876)
Can I tell you about the need for spiritual repair?

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:43.64)
Can you feel the need for spiritual repair?

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:50.743)
And so I wrote, I poured myself out, even in my hospital bed in Harlem.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:08.546)
a woman with no identity and no identification. Show me your papers.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:23.438)
Show me your papers to prove your humanity.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:40.969)
I resisted the gendered public lady.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:48.194)
That role that has been set aside for women that constrains us. Black women even more so.

Have you ever wondered?

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:03.992)
Why the average black woman?

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:08.718)
fills the need for so many grooming products.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:22.06)
What must we transform ourselves into to be accepted in the public square?

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:35.522)
I suppose some would argue that I was a feminist long before it became a thing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:51.789)
And still I wrote. I'm going to share with you a poem that I wrote. It's actually the last poem I wrote. Maybe before that I will share a different poem with you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:17.686)
Again, the translation. In Spanish, it's canción amarga. In English, bitter song.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:32.278)
Nothing disturbs my being, but I am sad.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:39.972)
Something of a slow shadow beats me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:48.086)
Although almost behind this agony, I have had the stars in my hand.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:56.726)
It must be the caress of the useless, the endless sadness of being a poet, of singing and singing without breaking the peerless tragedy of existence.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:21.752)
to be and not want to be. That's the split.

The battle that exhausts all expectation.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:38.766)
to discover that while the soul is dying, the miserable body still has strength.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:51.726)
Forgive me. Forgive me, my love.

if I don't name you.

Outside of your song, I am a dry wing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:08.952)
Death and I sleep together.

Singing to you alone awakens me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:27.404)
I suppose I wrote so much because within my writing I found some peace even though the writing itself caused me so much pain.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:44.322)
I'm trying to find that poem that I wanted to share with you. You can ask me some questions while I pull that up or share anything that you would like to share.

Adesoji Iginla (46:55.968)
Okay, so in terms of understanding your work, you made mention of the fact that, or in your words you said, I am my own path. What do mean by that?

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:13.442)
That was my entire life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:19.19)
understanding the injustices of our world and refusing to conform to them in order to eke out some level of personal comfort.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:38.818)
which made no sense to most people. Given my intellect, given the lightness of my skin, I could have been a society woman. I could have been wine and fatted. I could have...

lived relatively a comfortable life even though it was a colonized life even though I belonged to everyone but myself.

Adesoji Iginla (48:12.142)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:14.272)
And I chose again.

a great sacrifice, but a sacrifice so necessary. My own path. Because when I considered the sacrifice of never belonging to me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:38.894)
I was willing to risk it all.

I absolutely was willing to risk it all. And so, I traveled my own path. That's what I meant by that. And I'm still trying to. In this great book that has over 200 of my poems, I am trying to find the one that I wanted to share with you. But carry on with your comments and questions.

Adesoji Iginla (49:01.966)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (49:06.68)
Okay, so the observation with regards to you mentioned when you were speaking earlier, you talked about the free press. So this is just an observation. In comparison, the free press at the time, which essentially was trying to organize and inform the locals, what would you compare it to now where you have the press?

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:14.648)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (49:35.436)
that is whose freedom actually guaranteed in the American constitution, busy manufacturing consent for the elites. Would you say the press has...

undermine itself with regards to its duties to the American people or would you say that is just in keeping with what it's

Adesoji Iginla (50:07.009)
Not supposed to do.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:09.038)
There are no guarantees. I think that that is one of the lies that we have been fed and we have wholeheartedly swallowed. There are no guarantees except those which you're willing to fight and die for.

Adesoji Iginla (50:11.598)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:31.428)
the Constitution of the United States of America is not worth the paper it was written on. Understand that the formation of this nation called the United States of America began the Declaration of Independence began with what? All men are created equal.

Adesoji Iginla (50:31.864)
So even when it's codified.

Adesoji Iginla (50:38.35)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (50:59.374)
created equal.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:02.508)
Where in society was that practiced?

Adesoji Iginla (51:06.766)
But some would argue...

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:09.462)
So from the very beginning, we should have been crystal clear that the words on the paper meant nothing if we weren't willing to fight for it. Because anything can be said and can be written, but you're guaranteed only that which you will fight to keep, get and keep. So the freedom of the press,

Adesoji Iginla (51:24.299)
Aya Fubara Eneli (51:38.902)
When has the press in America been free? When the FBI was surveilling me?

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:47.734)
when the Ku Klux Klan was running rampant when Ida B. Wells press was burnt down

when black men hung like and women and children hung like strange fruits from trees.

when they espoused Christian virtues while they kidnapped and murdered and raped? When was there a free press? When has the press?

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:27.872)
ever told the truth and been free enough to tell the truth and what has historically and consistently happened to any of the truth tellers? Tell me when there was a free press.

Adesoji Iginla (52:44.75)
I mean that's a powerful question but some would argue what you're effectively saying is America has been in a dance of pretense for over 250 years.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:04.958)
Is that a shock to anybody?

Adesoji Iginla (53:08.088)
To come and shock to people who believe.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:10.186)
If all people are created free, why is Puerto Rico still not free?

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:18.752)
If all people are created free, why did the United States of America need all the additional amendments? Why did women have to fight for the right to vote?

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:36.214)
I did not, I was not aware that there were people still under the illusion that this has not always been a sham.

not if they studied any part of their own history.

Adesoji Iginla (53:56.024)
Well, as somebody said in the chat, I guess that was what was meant by the American dream.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:03.192)
That was what, and it appears that I am not supposed to read this last poem that I wanted to share with you because it is the last poem that I wrote and my eyes are scheming just, okay. But I will read this poem to you.

Adesoji Iginla (54:16.91)
waning.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:30.476)
Listen, I don't want...

your listeners and viewers to not also fail.

the passion that flowed through me.

to not also understand how much I loved us and how much I loved and believed in who we are and what we are capable of becoming. Certainly, there was a lot of despair in my life.

Adesoji Iginla (55:00.034)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:08.76)
But even in that despair, talking about a split was always that hope, that light, that understanding that this could not be forever.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:24.388)
Some of my poems, I will just give you some of the titles and then I'm gonna read one of them.

I wrote about love a lot. When you courted me.

Adesoji Iginla (55:34.616)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:39.81)
I wrote about going beyond what is and my brain has become a star of the infinite.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:52.544)
I will read to you called poem of the escape in your memory.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:01.175)
I have another one titled, That You Love Me in Green. Because isn't love the thing that we are all seeking? To be seen, to be cherished, to be nurtured.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:24.494)
poem that's titled, The Man and My Soul.

I am nothing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:45.134)
But let me read this one and it is called Poem for My Death.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:07.076)
just even looking through the poems that I've written and remembering where I was and what inspired each of them. Do you write? You don't have to, you do not have to be quote unquote.

Adesoji Iginla (57:20.577)
I tried to.

Adesoji Iginla (57:27.68)
Akazuma.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:29.634)
Well, the point I wanted to make is that you don't have to feel like if you're not trained in whatever

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:45.933)
ideology or structure, you know, that is prevailing today that that means you can't write. If you can feel, you can write. And so I will read this one poem for my death.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:05.526)
My subtitle is, Facing a Desire.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:11.566)
To die with myself, abandoned and alone, on the densest rock of a deserted island, in the instant a supreme longing for carnations, and in the landscape a tragic horizon of stone.

My eyes full of star graves and my passion spread, drained, dispersed. My fingers like children watching the cloud disappear. And my reason populated by immense sheets. My pale feelings returning to silence. Even love.

melted brother in my path. My name on twisting, yellow in the branches and my hands tensing to deliver me to the grasses. To join the last, the integral minute.

to offer myself to the countryside with a star's cleanliness and later fold the leaf of my simple flesh and drop without a smile nor a witness to the inertia.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:36.503)
Let no one profane my death with sobs, nor blanket me forever with innocent earth, that in the free moment I may freely take the planet's only freedom. With that ferocious happiness, my bones will begin to seek little windows in the dark flesh, and I giving myself fierce and freely to the inclement sea and alone breaking my chains.

Who could detain me with useless illusions when my soul begins to complete its work, making up my dreams of fertile dough for the fragile warm who will knock at my door? Each time smaller, my defeated smallness, each instant grander and simpler the surrender, my breast perhaps will roll to start a rosebud. Perhaps my lips will nurture white lilies.

What shall I call myself when all that is left is to remember myself on the rock of a deserted island, a carnation between the wind and my shadow? Son of mine with death will call me poet. And so I collapsed in the streets of Harlem and I was taken.

to a hospital with no identity and with no identification.

And there I died, alone.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:12.918)
in some ways echoing how I had lived in some ways.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:23.3)
I died on July 6, 1953 at the age of 39. No one immediately claimed my body.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:34.444)
and under New York City practice, unclaimed or unidentified decedents are buried on Heart Island, H-A-R-T, the public cemetery, Potter's Field.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:52.716)
My grandfather was a slave, bought for 30.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:01.9)
I was interred there anonymously.

About a month later, my dear, my beloved Consuelo, always reaching for me, always looking out for me, all the way from Puerto Rico.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:25.058)
galvanized friends and family and traced my case. They secured an exhumation and they repatriated my remains to Puerto Rico for honors and for burial in the land where I was born in Carolina to be specific.

You should know that I was a poet for my people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:01.164)
And so it's not a tragedy to me that I was buried in a public cemetery with my people. Since the 19th century, Island had served as a public cemetery for people who die indigent, unidentified, on

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:25.026)
Historically, they would get simple pine coffins, similar to the one that Bishop Desmond Tutu asked to be buried in.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:36.086)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:38.009)
and they were placed in trench graves. Records were kept by plot in row to allow later identification and disinterment. And for decades, those operations were overseen by the Department of Correction and burials performed by incarcerated labor from Rikers Island.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:06.54)
In recent years, management, I understand, has transitioned to New York City parks with expanded visitation. More than a million people are buried there. More than a million indigent, unclaimed bodies, including decedents from public health crisis, stillborn infants,

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:21.385)
claimed.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:28.567)
Huh.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:35.894)
and adults whose next of kin could not be located or who could not afford a private burial.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:44.13)
There we go.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:47.17)
But today...

I am part of a literary canon. They're bilingual editions and anthologies that place me among foundational Latin American and US poets. In 2010, the US Postal Service, this indigent, unclaimed woman.

was honored with a literary arts stamp.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:22.742)
In East Harlem, there is an area that is co-named Julia de Brugos Boulevard. There are cultural centers in East Harlem and Cleveland that bear my name. There are schools. I have received honorary degrees. I, who could not keep a roof over my head for portions of my life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:51.993)
There is a lineage to my movement, a movement that I had joined that was part of a longer lineage. My fusion of nationalism, Black identity, and feminist self authorship has influenced generations of Latina, Afro Latina, and New Yorker writers and artists.

Publish your own work. You do not have to wait to be celebrated.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:26.232)
written much and much has been written and edited since my death. My first collection, Poema in Vientes, Urcosa, 1938, Cancion de la Verdad, Senzilla, 1939, also self-published. My sister edited posthumously some of my poems, El Mar, You Too, my sister Consuelo was determined to honor and maintain my legacy.

That was published in 1954, a year after my death. Song of the Simple Truth, which is the book that I was reading from earlier. The Complete Poems of Julia de Brugos, a bilingual edition. It has both the Spanish and the English translations in the same book. Edited and translated by Jack Aguerros. Obra Poetica.

published by Instituto de Cultura, Puerto Rico. There are documentaries on me. There are...

autobiographies on me. There are tributes on me.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:39.103)
our graph is.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:47.532)
statutes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:49.624)
There are statutes, yes.

And though it is not what I aspired to,

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:08:01.59)
Even this should be a lesson for those concerned about.

charting their own course.

walking their own paths. I may not be physically living, but if we understand that we are spiritual beings temporarily having a physical experience in these bodies,

then your existence extends before this body and after this body. And so why not live in a way that honors that? And so even if you are not embraced, celebrated for who you are, for the person you have been created to be in this time,

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:44.034)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:03.682)
You live it anyway. Because there are many who conformed.

whose names are forever gone.

But I, Julia.

I will live.

Adesoji Iginla (01:09:29.218)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chris Bogers. And yes, what else can we say? You are your own path, like you said, and we've heard you. Go on.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:44.067)
I do have a question. I just am curious. I was always curious. That is a mark of intelligence, actually. For your viewers, I would be interested to know how many of them had ever heard of me or my poems before today, and how many of them are Puerto Rican or New Yorker?

And what if they had heard of me? What they heard today that may differ from what they had learned in the past. You know, on the island on Puerto Rico, they do study me in the schools, but even that has been curated. They take parts of me that fit in more with a certain narrative.

but they don't take all of me. Just curious as to whether your viewers, your listeners had ever heard of me. Of course, one of the things that often just irritated me is people who would question whether I am of African descent just would cause me to bristle.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:14.68)
Well, I would say on my part answering your question, no, not before today. But reading your book, Becoming Julia de Bogos, I understand why it is that our paths never crossed. Because like you said, the story is not only curated.

but they're also pigeonholed in such a way that your reason for existing the way you existed is not up for debate. Because the moment people start understanding that someone had to live like this, die like this, be buried like this, then like you said earlier, anybody seeking to inform or organize people

is a threat to the status quo. So as long as that person exists, either dead or alive, their story has to be framed in such a way that it doesn't disturb the status quo.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:32.804)
Well, pass my story on. Let my words sit with you and.

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:36.748)
It will.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:44.188)
Let it, I pray. All of our paths are different. Understand that. And I understand that. So I have no expectation that anyone reading my work or studying my life should now choose my path. That would actually be anti what I lived. But you must.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:12.344)
Isolate yourself enough.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:24.43)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:25.668)
cannot hear understand and I did not obviously understand it from the moment I started you take one step and then you see the light for the next step and sometimes I did not see the light but I followed my intuition I followed my I Followed that inner guiding light if you will

even when I stumbled and fell. And so what I'm saying to your listeners is...

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:13.604)
for some of you.

You may be going through a time that feels incredibly lonely, incredibly isolating, where you feel so misunderstood and so abandoned.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:32.398)
where you're yearning for love and you give it freely, but it is not freely returned to you. is, it comes with conditions that you can't abide by.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:51.028)
and it can get so loud in your head and so heavy.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:00.61)
your body trembling.

for the warmth.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:08.428)
of a hug from someone who sees and accepts you as you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:20.866)
And I pray that you find that love. And I also pray that whether you find it or not.

that you understand that this place of isolation, this place of loneliness is also rich.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:43.884)
It's rich with lessons. It's rich with...

portals that allow you to connect to ancient memories.

It is rich with time.

to do the thinking that you otherwise would not do if you were surrounded by a bunch of people, if there was always merryness and happiness all around you. There's a richness in that pain in helping you, forcing you even to strip away

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:16:41.51)
all of the masks.

so that you can see you clearly. Because until you see yourself clearly, how can you embrace you? How can you live you? So, embrace the path. And of course today,

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:10.69)
you can connect in memory in such a way that allows you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:18.734)
to do the spiritual repair so that you are not self-medicating with dangerous items like I did.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:36.58)
to the spiritual repair.

in that loneliness. Do the spiritual repair. That's what I want to leave with you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:51.938)
Thank you. you. And with that, we've come to the end of this week's episode of Women and Resistance. Next week, we'll be looking at the life of Edwidge Dandekat. Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:10.82)
Are we gonna do Edwidge Danticat or are we gonna do Abby Lincoln? Who are we gonna do? Whoever the spirits call upon.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:16.494)
Whoever the I mean, what do you think? Yes. Let's do Abilinkin. Let's do Abilinkin. Yeah. So next week, will be the turn of Abilinkin to see how she as a woman resisted. And again, this idea in itself was a sister's idea.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:25.86)
Let's do, let's do Abby Lincoln. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:45.704)
I was just being the nosy bugger that I am.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:53.636)
Feel like I need to take off the wig to to tell that we've told this story before though, haven't we? Yes, so I so he's the brother the friend that you want in your life because He will bother you Nicely to death to know really to encourage you to be

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:58.56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have. But...

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:14.158)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:19:18.66)
who you're called to be. And some of you have heard me tell this story before. This young man, because he's younger than me, this young man came into my life at about the same time that my younger brother made his transition from Earth. And I really, really believe that my brother,

is working through you at SOG to keep me on my path. So this podcast would not be happening without Adesoggi. It would not. I was sitting trying to find time to continue with my research and to write and not always making time for it. And Adesoggi was like cracking the whip and being that.

bothersome younger brother. Anybody have younger brothers, are just irritating as all get out, but you love them nonetheless. That is who this amazing individual is in my life and I'm so very grateful for you. Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:20:29.922)
No worries. Yes, we're here to bug. long as it produces stuff like this, you know? So I mean, you do have a body of work to do. sometimes when you talk through whatever it is you intend to do, you find you're one step closer to achieving that set goal. So.

Speaking about this woman just makes it a lot more easier for you to recall when you start putting pen to paper to say, okay, time to write about this person. Now, you know you've read and it's easier and it flows better because there is a rhyme and reason to it as opposed to just sequesting yourself a way to do the writing the old way. I mean, you still need to do the job, but

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:22.424)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:23.402)
It's a lot more easier now that you have it out there. You can sense what works and what needs adding to. So that's why we're here. yeah. So next week, we're doing Abilinkin. And any final thoughts?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:43.16)
I need more wigs. I'm just kidding. No, this is fun. Yeah. But no, thank you. Thank you again. And to everybody who watches and everybody who shares, of course, like, share, subscribe, all of that. Share with young people. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:50.496)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. It is.

Adesoji Iginla (01:22:07.384)
Yeah, and like you said, here we do a lot of informing and organizing of thoughts. So Sunday join us for the weekly African news review. And again, we're doing the same thing, trying to understand how diaspora locks into what is Africa and

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:22:21.092)
you

Adesoji Iginla (01:22:36.14)
how imperialism and neocolonialism does a number on us. Some of us are still in our bubbles, but hopefully with mediums like this, we can come out of said bubbles and embrace, like the good sister said, embrace what our true path is. So until next week, it's good night and God bless.