Mis Vecinos, My Neighbors

What is myth? What is lore? What is home, homeland and identity? What is real history, and how can we be sure of it? Who tells it? Who claims it, and who can’t? Who safeguards it? Who publishes it? Who reads it? These are the questions I am pondering right now as I venture into my next book project, a collection titled Mis Vecinos, My Neighbors.

 

My aim is to write a full-length, multi-genre, bilingual book (working with a translator) comprised of poetry, non-fiction, mini-historiographies, and elegies exploring the Mexico-America relationship as neighbors, and my own personal interaction with both countries. Stories, poems, and historic research will be derived on both sides of the border. Through use of mostly primary sources (oral histories, artifacts, relics, diaries, memories, memoirs, speeches, art, newspaper and magazine articles, personal experiences, etc.) with a touch of secondary sources, this book will culminate in a time capsule that honors the past and present and its intersection during a time of great social upheaval and awakening.

 

“Empathy is cognitive and emotional—to inhabit another person’s worldview is to feel the world with them.” –civil rights activist, Valerie Kaur