About Amanda Alcántara:
I am a Caribbean palabrera living in Spanglish. A wordsmith making a name for herself between two worlds, using the written-word and theatrical performance as tools to confront a society that tells me to be less. That is less loud, less outspoken, less sexy, less black, less immigrant, less visible, less me.
With my writing, I declare myself a puta and a feminist, and let myself be free via the pen. Beyond the binaries that confine us, challenging the pressure to be monolingual or nationalist in both the United States and the Dominican Republic. Challenging the pressure to conform to society’s standards of womanhood.
With each essay, I surrender a story to the world, and make my existence permanent amid constant social death. As a working-class woman of color, change is the only constant in my life, as is nostalgia. So I write as if the sun is always setting, with pain for what’s lost, and hope for what’s to come.
With each poem, written boldly con flow, I embrace the Spanish from the country that raised me, the same one that others say is not good enough. Because we cut the esses, and the r’s, and have invented a new language.
And they say I make space for Dominicans, for women of color, for people like us, like me.
But with my words, I don’t merely make space. I build homes, ones where I exist fully, without folding.
Mi casa. Palabrera.
I am a Caribbean palabrera living in Spanglish. A wordsmith making a name for herself between two worlds, using the written-word and theatrical performance as tools to confront a society that tells me to be less. That is less loud, less outspoken, less sexy, less black, less immigrant, less visible, less me.
With my writing, I declare myself a puta and a feminist, and let myself be free via the pen. Beyond the binaries that confine us, challenging the pressure to be monolingual or nationalist in both the United States and the Dominican Republic. Challenging the pressure to conform to society’s standards of womanhood.
With each essay, I surrender a story to the world, and make my existence permanent amid constant social death. As a working-class woman of color, change is the only constant in my life, as is nostalgia. So I write as if the sun is always setting, with pain for what’s lost, and hope for what’s to come.
With each poem, written boldly con flow, I embrace the Spanish from the country that raised me, the same one that others say is not good enough. Because we cut the esses, and the r’s, and have invented a new language.
And they say I make space for Dominicans, for women of color, for people like us, like me.
But with my words, I don’t merely make space. I build homes, ones where I exist fully, without folding.
Mi casa. Palabrera.
