{"id":3875,"date":"2011-05-25T10:30:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T14:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=3875"},"modified":"2011-12-06T13:21:22","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T18:21:22","slug":"process-profile-barbara-jane-reyes-discusses-13-black-jesus-from-the-city-that-nearly-broke-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/25\/process-profile-barbara-jane-reyes-discusses-13-black-jesus-from-the-city-that-nearly-broke-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Process Profile: Barbara Jane Reyes Discusses “13. Black Jesus” [from “The City That Nearly Broke Me”]"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Barbara Jane Reyes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of <\/em>Diwata<\/a> (BOA Editions, Ltd.<\/a>, 2010), recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, <\/em>Gravities of Center<\/a> (Arkipelago Books<\/a>, 2003) and <\/em>Poeta en San Francisco<\/a> (Tinfish Press<\/a>, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award<\/a> of the Academy of American Poets. She is co-editor with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, of Doveglion Press<\/a>, and an adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em>For APIA Heritage Month 2011, we are revisiting our Process Profile series, in which contemporary Asian American poets discuss their craft, focusing on their process for a single poem from inception to publication. <\/strong><\/em>This year, we\u2019ve been asking several <\/strong><\/em><\/em>Lantern Review contributors whose work gestures back toward history or legacy to discuss <\/em><\/strong>their process for composing a poem of theirs that we\u2019ve published. In this installment, Barbara Jane Reyes discusses her piece “13. Black Jesus<\/a>” [an excerpt of her longer project “The City That Nearly Broke Me”], which appeared in Issue 1 of <\/a><\/strong><\/em>Lantern Review<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I love my Black Jesus persona<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He emerged in my \u201cFor the City That Nearly Broke Me\u201d series, which I started writing after this prompt: \u201cWrite about the city that saved you. Write about one that nearly broke you.\u201d Rachelle Cruz<\/a> posted this prompt on her blog while she was a PEN Emerging Voices fellow.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never excavated Manila, my birthplace; it eludes my understanding, it\u2019s always spitting me out. That\u2019s how I see it, and so I wanted to find a thwart-proof way in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken on Black Jesus and the galleon trade at Jacket2<\/a>, in an interview conducted by Craig Santos Perez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is a general disdain Filipinos have for dark skin; we claim those precious few drops of Spanish blood. In this desire for whiteness, it\u2019s ignored that much Spanish blood entered the Filipino via colonial rape.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cBuffalo Solider\u201d has been around since the 1860\u2019s, and refers to US cavalry and infantry regiments of African American soldiers. There are legends about the term\u2019s origin, but I can\u2019t get over the historical significance of African American men as animals. Moreover, these Buffalo Soldiers fought against Native Americans in the \u201cIndian Wars,\u201d and against the Filipinos in the Philippine American War. People of color pitted against one another in America\u2019s formative wars of conquest.\u00a0 Some defected from the US military, became Katipunan\/Philippine freedom fighters, as \u201cposters and leaflets addressed to \u2018The Colored American Soldier<\/a>\u2019 described the lynching and discrimination against Blacks in the US and discouraged them from being the instrument of their white masters\u2019 ambitions to oppress another \u2018people of color\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

And of course, \u201cBuffalo Soldier\u201d is a Bob Marley song, whose form the poem borrows. It\u2019s a narrative of transnational displacement, an anthem of survival and resistance:<\/p>\n

And he was taken from Africa,
\nbrought to America.
\nFighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
\nSay it was a buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta.
\nBuffalo soldier, in the heart of America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s all of these displacements and reorientations that have allowed me to start the excavation.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Excerpt from “13. Black Jesus”<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Bob Marley<\/em><\/p>\n

The indio who carved me \u00a0\u00a0knew the drum and the heart are one.
\nHe knew the song for hunting, \u00a0\u00a0the waiting song, the calling song.
\nHe knew the song for planting, \u00a0\u00a0the song of earth’s open hand.
\nHe knew the song for walking, \u00a0\u00a0the river water song.<\/p>\n

Buffalo Soldier, \u00a0\u00a0Carabao Brother,
\nStolen from the Americas, \u00a0\u00a0brought to the islands,
\nSharpening machete, \u00a0\u00a0crouching in the jungle,
\nBorn into slavery, \u00a0\u00a0son of revolution.<\/p>\n

From \u201c13. Black Jesus<\/a>\u201d | Barbara Jane Reyes | Issue 1, <\/a>Lantern Review<\/a> | <\/em>p 65.
\nClick here<\/a> to read the poem in its entirety.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[318],"tags":[314,311,353,201,321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3875"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3895,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions\/3895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}