i was born a pariah
it said so on my birth certificate my parents weren’t married there was love
but no signatures
those were the days when signatures were worth more than love
in my father’s country in my mother’s country
i was born in the days when the vast waters divided understanding
when minds didn’t digest
ceviche and snails force and reason
like the great procuress i crossed the vast waters
she, hiding at the bottom of a trunk i, riding a winged snail
i offered my heart to my father’s country
i offered my mother’s teachings to my father’s country
just as the great bawd opened love’s doors
to the women of america
i wanted to open the fight for freedom to the women of america
in my father’s country
i was left drifting aimlessly hypocrisy surrounding me
the social classes drowning me
the way they treated the dwellers of tahuantinsuyo wounded my thoughts
i came from the other shore of the vast waters i came navigating those rough waters
i came dizzy with the need for justice because of that
and without belonging i wrote as if i belonged
i, flora tristán, broke the silence
i condemned the society from which my father came i felt like one of the exploited
i felt like one of the indigenous i felt like an outraged woman i, flora, refused to keep silent
back on the other shore of the vast waters i wrote
my blood boiling my heart bleeding
for what i saw in my father’s country
in my father’s country they burned my writing in my mother’s, they applauded me
in both places, hypocrisy
people here and there nourished my pen
and my struggle for equality
for the right to live free of prejudice
for the right to be a pariah with equal rights
in my adopted world
world of the dispossessed the world of women fighting for their rights
Gustavo Gac-Artigas is a member of PEN Chile and PEN America, corresponding member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE), and full member of the Universalis Poetarum Academy and the Tomitana Academy of Constanța, Romania. During his time as a political refugee in France, where he was expelled after the 1973 military coup, he recreated his theater group, Teatro de la Resistencia-Chile, and participated in national tours and approximately 17 international theater festivals. After a failed attempt to return to Chile in 1985 and a second exile in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States with his wife, a Puerto Rican academic and translator, and their two young children, where he continues his literary work, primarily as a poet and opinion columnist. His work, internationally recognized, has been partially translated into English, French, Romanian, Italian, Korean, and Malayalam, and published in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. It has also been included in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has participated in numerous international poetry festivals, book fairs, and bilingual poetry readings in Paris, the United States, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, India, Costa Rica, and Romania, among others: the International Hispanic/Latino Book Fair of Queens, NY (which was dedicated to him in 2023), the NJ International Book Fair, the Encuentro de Poetas Iberoamericanos: Poeta en Nueva York (2025), the XIII Festival Mondial de Poésie Mihai Eminescu, Craiova, June 2024, FILNYC, The Americas Poetry Festival (TAPFNY, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), the New York City Poetry Festival, FIPA-Aguacatán in Guatemala, FIP-Turrialba in Costa Rica, Espacio Jour et Nuit Culture, Sorbonne University, and Espace l’Harmattan in Paris. Most recent publication: poetry collection Si lo hubiera Sabido..., Valparaíso Ediciones, Granada, 2024.
Priscilla Gac-Artigas, PhD is an award-winning poetry translator working between Spanish, English, and French. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Full Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE), a Corresponding Member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and Professor Emerita of Latin American literature, Monmouth University, NJ.
Andrea G. Labinger, PhD is an acclaimed translator of Latin American literature. Ph.D. in Latin American Literature (Harvard University) and Professor Emerita (University of La Verne, California). Labinger has translated works by authors such as Sabina Berman, Mempo Giardinelli, Ana María Shua, Gustavo Gac-Artigas, Daína Chaviano, Guillermo Saccomanno, and many others.