December 14, 2023 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT | By Sydney McGarr
Ruben Quesada stands in front of a group of Colorado College students and faculty in South Hall Commons. The front of his laptop is covered in stickers. Among them, the Chicago state flag and a cactus wearing a cowboy hat. The projector behind him displays his Google homepage. His tabs are sorted into folders: “Teaching Latino Lit,” “Costa Rica,” “Must Read Later,” “Queer Studies” and “Vocal Warm-Ups.”
He’s ready to speak.
Over the course of his career, Quesada has published three books of poetry and prose. Most recently, he edited “Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry,” a collection of essays by poets of Latin American descent. His poetry reading on Dec. 8 was sponsored by the “Humanities for Our Times” Mellon Grant and the Maclean Visiting Writers Series.
Professor Natanya Pulley, organizer of the event, says the grant serves to “broaden our discussion of creativity to inclusivity.”
Quesada’s passion for words is clear. He speaks with force and treats the words with care. Between poems, he breaks, and the room sits in silence.
He begins by reading some older works, with prose dedicated to discussing more personal themes. He was born and raised in Los Angeles by Costa Rican parents. Spanish is his first language. His poems reflect this upbringing as they flow through words: smoke, gold, sulfur, rosemary, sap.
A love of writing was not an immediate instinct for Quesada. He said the turning point came when he won a Los Angeles Times writing contest for a piece of his writing that a friend submitted for him because he was too scared. The poem was written from the perspective of trees fighting deforestation.
“When you’re young, you feel like you can do anything. And you can. And so, I wanted to save the planet. And so, I would write about it. And that was really the turning point for me,” Quesada says.
After the 2011 publication of his first book, Quesada says he shifted outward. Rather than thinking just about himself, he began to ponder his role in the world. He calls his second publication, “Jane,” “as far away from myself as I can get.” Inspired by Costa Rican myths that Quesada’s grandmother told him to lull him to sleep, “Jane”follows the titular protagonist throughout her life as she deals with the legacy of oppression of women in the 1950s as a flight attendant.
Recently, Quesada shifted his focus to a new challenge: editing an anthology. He says he saw a need for an anthology that represented the entirety of Latin America, not just the Spanish-speaking countries.
“[The anthology] is predominantly poets who are Hispanic, but I was able to find two poets with a Portuguese background. So, it feels much more representative of Latin America in that way,” he says.
Quesada has an important message for Colorado College students: know where you are from.
“It reminds you of how you got here. There’s so much that came before you, just like every experience we have makes us who we are up until this moment,” he says.
He also emphasizes the importance of Spanish-speaking students embracing their identities.
“I think it’s important that Hispanic students understand that their identity is valuable,” he continues, “keeping the Spanish language alive is also really valuable.”
As for Quesada’s future plans, he is awaiting the publication of his next book, “Brutal Companion,” which was picked up for publication by Barrow Street Press. He continues to write. As he puts it, “poetry is everything to me. It’s all I do. And I couldn’t be happier.”