“This is a strong, first book.”
—PETER SEARS,
Oregon Poet Laureate
—PETER SEARS,
Oregon Poet Laureate
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Showcasing writers from the Pacific Northwest,
redbat books is proud to launch its new book series with Speaking at a Time, Amelia Díaz Ettinger’s debut book of English and Spanish poetry. Speaking at a TimeEnglish and Spanish Poetry
by Amelia Díaz Ettinger PRAISE FOR SPEAKING AT A TIME
“Amelia Díaz Ettinger’s book of poems, Speaking at a Time, is a gathering of poems about her father, her daughter, the town of Caguas, and the race track, among other things. These recollections pulse with energy, and they echo the poetry of Lorca and Neruda. This is a strong, first book.”
—PETER SEARS, Oregon Poet Laureate
“In Speaking At A Time, Amelia Díaz Ettinger first celebrates growing up in 1960s Puerto Rico. She names what she loves–the island’s tropical riches, the lives of those who loved her, the daily facts of working people. In forthright bi-lingual vernacular, the poems catalog her urban childhood and adolescence in Caguas—a physician’s daughter thriving in a multi-cultural milieu. Evenings, she listened to her father and uncles reciting Hispanic poetry. On television, she heard Pales Matos and Nicolas Guillen. At school she learned to write her own poems. When she immigrated to the United States in 1974, and began her quest for an education, love, career, marriage, family, everything changed. In the 1990s, while raising her children far from any community of Puerto Rican writers or poets such as those Nuyoricans who publish their experiences in the United States, she realized that her immigrant quest had created great cultural and linguistic distance between herself and her children. So, the later poems develop conflicts between immigration and integration, between Anglo and Hispanic cultures, between alienation and community. To resolve those conflicts, the poet synthesizes cultures and languages, best symbolized by the book’s bi-lingual presentation, while she continues to document and question what it means to be a Puerto Rican exile in Oregon. This is strong and honest work—filled with love and grief and eloquence. With these solo pages, she joins her distant contemporaries—Victor Hernandez Cruz, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Tato Laviera.”
—GEORGE VENN, Eastern Oregon University,
General Editor, Oregon Literature Series |
About the AuthorBorn in Mexico and raised in Puerto Rico, Amelia Díaz Ettinger has written poems that reflect the struggle with identity often found in immigrants. She began writing poetry at age three by dictating her poems out loud to her uncles who wrote them down for her. Amelia continued writing poems and short stories throughout her life. Her writing took a back seat while she raised two wonderful human beings and worked as a high school teacher. Now retired, she has renewed her writing with fervor. She currently resides in Summerville, Oregon with her husband Chip, her dog Pi, and seven unnamed chickens.
www.ameliaettinger.wordpress.com |
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