bookshelf
My Not-My Soldier
Los Bárbaros
By Jennifer MacKenzie (Fence Books; $16)
(McNally Jackson Books; $16)
Poetry, according to Lehman
professor of journalism and
composition Jennifer MacKenzie,
staves off history. And yet in the
collection My Not-My Soldier, her
role as poet is to absorb history
as it is created around her, and
then filter it through her own
identity and words.
New York is often touted as a place
that can be all things to all people.
And while that may be true in many
ways, what it was not was a city where
you could find a Spanish-language
literary magazine for emerging Latin
American writers. Until Los Bárbaros.
Ulises Gonzales, a professor in
Lehman’s Languages and Literatures
department, began the journal a few
years ago and has served as editor
through its five published editions.
The 34 poems in her debut
are concerned, primarily, with
MacKenzie’s experience as an
expat living in the Middle East.
In 2008, she traveled to Syria
to write about Iraqi refugees as a freelance journalist. “I realized I
couldn’t write anything I respected because I didn’t know enough,”
she said, explaining why she went back to the U.S.
Six months later, MacKenzie returned to Damascus on a one-way
ticket. Her official plan was to learn Arabic and translate poetry,
but her creative plan was, she said, “to become involved with the
literary community there.” She stayed amid escalating violence,
which soon informed her writing. “The poems in the book are about
being a woman in different places where conflict is occurring. More
specifically, being an American woman mediating between safety
and vulnerability,” she said. “It’s also like reportage, a transcription
of my reactions and then trying to react to those reactions.”
After Syria, MacKenzie and her husband moved to Istanbul for
one year, and settled in the Bronx in September 2013. There, she
completed the collection, whose title speaks to her ambivalent
relationship with American geopolitical power. And now, she is
finding a new geographic—and geopolitical—inspiration for her
writing. “In Syria I was teaching English as a second language and
thought of how my own language was an embodiment of a certain
cultural power I had,” she said. “At Lehman, I’m in a certain position
of authority because my job is to present language in a certain
way…[to say] ‘this use of language is right, this use of language
is wrong.’ There’s a politics to that.”
Next for Mackenzie, who admits she is not ready to “let go of
Syria,” is a nonfiction book about three Syrian families with the
working title Fugitive Refusals. Thanks to a PSC-CUNY grant, she
continues to return to the nation that has a hold on her imagination
for research.
10
Lehman Today/Spring 2015
The name is inspired by the Greek
poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,”
yet the magazine has a very
different geographic focus. Gonzales intentionally narrowed
Los Barbaros’ lens, creating a publication about Latin American
writers—as well as cartoonists, photographers, and illustrators—and
their relationship with New York City. To that end, the cover of the
second edition was a drawing of Colombian author Gabriel García
Márquez walking through Central Park. Featuring short stories and
poems along with the illustrated pieces, it has included the work
of not only Gonzales, but other writers like Mercedes Cebrian,
Fernanda Triass, and Isaac Goldemberg. Gonzales, who is from
Peru, published his first novel, País de Hartos, in 2010 and has
had exhibitions of his comics in Lima, Buenos Aires and Bogotá.
He hopes that future editions will be translated from Spanish and
available in English as well—though he does not plan to release a
bilingual version. He also envisions an expanded readership, with
Los Bárbaros having
contributors and an
audience throughout
Latin America and
Spain. The next edition
of Los Bárbaros will be
released (and available
online at losbarbarosny.
com) next year. There
are plans to publish an
issue dedicated
to female erotic
literature in New York,
as well as one on
fantasy literature.