Chicana/Chicano Poetry During December While in Novi Sad, Serbia

Downtown, Novi Sad, Serbia (in the Plaza)

There is a beauty to Novi Sad that reminds me so much of La Placita in Los Angeles; or La Plaza en Guadalajara, Mexico; or even La Plaza in Salamanca, Spain -- a place where people walk, gather, sing, enjoy each other's company late into the evening:  children and their guardians, young and middle aged groups, the elderly-- all out for a stroll, or for a concert, or to ice skate at the plaza rink. People are talking to each other (not buried into their I-phones) in animated conversations, or sitting leisurely for a good long meal.

Visnja Vujin  and Amelia Montes at The University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Tonight in Novi Sad, I strolled with friends after having taught my graduate course.  It had been an intense class tonight teaching Gloria Anzaldúa's book, _Borderlands/La Frontera_, then listening to  students making connections to their country-- the painful history they have experienced in one way or another.  They are teaching me so much, helping me deeply contemplate-- at a most visceral level, their personal stories connected to their nation (once called Yugoslavia), stories about being torn apart in the most heart wrenching way in the name of nationalism.  So many stories pointing to the consequences of adhering to a nationalist agenda.

Graduate Students at The University of Novi Sad discussing in pairs an aspect of Borderlands/La Frontera

I had read various articles in the past about the impact of Anzaldúa's writings in Poland, Spain, Germany, the Balkans.  But to be here, to personally hear student perspectives at the University of Novi Sad enlarges our worlds.

I think of Yesenia Montilla and her poem "Maps."

Maps
by Yesenia Montilla

For Marcelo

Some maps have blue borders
like the blue of your name
or the tributary lacing of
veins running through your
father's hands. & how the last
time I saw you, you held
me for so long I saw whole
lifetimes flooding by me
small tentacles reading
for both our faces.  I wish
maps would be without
borders & that we belonged
to no one & everyone
at once, what a world that
would be.  Or not a world
maybe we would call it
something more intrinsice
like forgiving or something
simplistic like river or dirt.
& if I were to see you
tomorrow & everyone you
came from had disappeared
I would weep with you & drown
out any black lines that this
earth allowed us to give it--
because what is a map but
a useless prison?  We are all
so lost & no naming of blank
spaces can save us. & what
is a map but the delusion of
safety?  The line drawn is always
in the sand & folds in on itself
before we're done making it.
& that line, there, south of
el rio, how it dares to cover
up the bodies, as though we
would forget who died there
& for what? As if we could
forget that if you spin a globe
& stop it with your finger
you'll land it on top of someone
loving, someone who was not
expecting to be crushed by thirst.