The Abuela Stories Project by Peggy Robles-Alvarado & Daisy Arroyo
by Dimitri Reyes
The Abuela Stories Project, put together by writer/ educator Peggy Robles-Alvarado and Bronx artist Daisy Arroyo, is an amazing collection of words and images highlighting the iconic spirit of the Grandmother. Among the themed anthologies I’ve read, none has had a group of writers speak with such a collective voice. This comes from the fact that all the stories and poems are snapshots attempting to deliver a 360 degree view of the grandmother where she becomes a source of energy rather than memory. Moreover, Robles- Alvarado’s magic-making extends itself way into the editing of this all-female anthology where her hands have left fingerprints on every square inch of this book like the way Abuela cleans every square foot of casa on Sundays.
This energy is not only representative in the poems but also extends into the way in which The Abuela Stories Project is organized.
Moving from the status quo of the domesticated Grandmother and into the complexities that make the matriarch, the book is one-part praise and one-part interrogation into how or why our Grandmothers are the pinnacle models of family, either revealing themselves as the cartilage or repellent of a family system. On the contrary, the sections come together and converse in the fluids of oral history the way many communities find out information just through conversation. This also calls upon the natural mystic power of Robles- Alvarado in regards to her selection of writers whom contain a similar mysticism. What one can notice is how clearly these stories translate from spoken word to page where every piece of writing from the preface to the bios are given an equal amount of attention. This can be seen in the beginnings of the sections where each chapter opens up to a definition and a stunning photograph about the strong Abuela archetype.
Abuela sabe crear
I
Olga Huraira Ayala: ol-guh, woman of wind, “eye”-YAH-luh Synonym- Ita
Holy, high creative, imaginative woman who rejects batas and chancletas. 2. In the business of briding polymer clay with espíritu, risas, and buen humor; see Hecho A Mano. 3. Defines self as a rare form of slightly crazy that keeps her grounded when wanting to run away from home. 4. Keeps baggie locks from her grandson’s first haircut. 5. After years of battling rolos, alisados, and conformist straighteners, made peace with her crown of curls; una mata de melena; cabello de rasistencia. 6. Knows prosperity dwells in fingertips. 7. Creación.
Here, “Abuela sabe crear” opens up the book and we are welcomed with a picture of Olga Huraira Ayala, one of the seven models Arroyo had photographed. In the first image of the book, Olga stands in what can only be akin to a Latinx Wonder Woman pose, with her curly, dark-hair, a thick silver bracelet, necklace of aluminum can tabs, and flexing the bicep with her right arm while her left arm is on her hip. The representation of this pose tells a story of strength and the possession of culture by the way there is a minimalist attention paid to the small things that make up facets of a culture, like hair and jewelry.
In a manner which can even be called worshiping, the subjects of this book are held at such a high regard, one can quickly see how the Abuela becomes an icon of sorts where the anthology as a whole remodels the matriarch as another worldly being.
Last Rites Haiku
Thirsty and gasping,
she called for God and Mamà-
They’re one and the same
As one can see here, the subject of linguistic and reminiscent explorations of the Abuela makes the reader and writer simultaneously discover the omnipotent force of the matriarch. Conversely, the reader is allowed to also wrestle with the complicatedness of a grandmother’s energy being both describable yet ineffable, all-powerful yet imperfect. The Abuela Stories Project works well in this way, encompassing both poetry and prose to practice the ways in which we remember people and situations. This is an exercise in constant practice where poetics finds writers consistently striving to find new ways to explore and explain what our everyday diction cannot. When one embarks on these intimate and fragile journeys of interrogation, those audiences who choose to enter the conversations end up emotionally participating in the sorting out of that memory as well.
Lastly, I appreciate how The Abuela Stories Project doesn’t fall to a pitfall some poetry books succumb to when broken up into sections. That is, avoiding the temptation of sectioning off the work from one another in a way that segments each section into a project (no pun intended.) As a matter of fact, this book does quite the opposite, carrying a type of synergy from section to section. Notice how “Abuela sabe crear,” “Abuela sabe vivir,” “Abuela sabe perdonar,” “Abuela sabe renacer,” “Abuela saber sanar,” “Abuela sabe moverse,” and “Abuela sabe luchar,” which translates respectively to, “Grandmother knows how to create,” “Grandmother knows how to live,” “Grandmother knows how to forgive,” “Grandmother knows how to be reborn,” “Grandmother Knows how to heal,” “Grandmother knows how to move,” and “Grandmother knows how to fight,” all cohesively flow into one another by mentioning the matriarch first. Though it can be argued that each title is functioning as a complete sentence, which would mean the “A” in Abuela would be following proper grammatical rules for the beginning of a sentence as well as the correct rules for proper nouns, one could also argue how the capital “A” in Abuela becomes its own entity. Separate from the other words that make out each section, Abuela becomes elusive and mystifying in its anaphoric nature, being a constant pressure point repeated throughout the text where the 7 headings become declarations rather than markers.
And though The Abuela Stories Project is in constant movement, in motion through an internalized voice, whether we are operating in the “I” or narration, one can still see the prevalent character types and storylines of the Latinx household through pieces that are piercingly personal. We can still see the submissive wife with the aggressive husband, the strong matriarch that puts her own life on hold for two generations of children, and a mother that walks away for bigger reasons than understood. What you fill find in The Abuela Stories Project is the power of women, the sacred feminine, engaging with daughters and granddaughters and coming to different outcomes each time. This anthology does many things well, but one of the things it does best is what it had set out to do in “the why,” and that is to praise the backbone that holds the Latinx family erect, No matter what she is called, Ita, Gamma, Grandma, Nani, Bibi, Grandmother, or Abuela, in her own words, “She just gets shit done.”
