Poet and author Ana María Fores Tamayo dedicates her non-writing career to working with immigrants as executive director of Refugee Support Network, which leads pro se asylum clinics.
Inspired by those stories and by her own experiences as a child Cuban refugee, Tamayo wrote “Peregrina/Pilgrim” — a bilingual collection of poems and photos that highlight the immigrant experience in the United States.
Fores Tamayo said the collection, published by Conocimientos Press, represents a conglomerate of different immigrant stories.
“It’s not one person, it’s not one feeling … it’s universal,” Fores Tamayo said. “It’s every woman, every child, every man. It speaks to everyone -- every migrant who comes and how they feel as they’re coming here.”
Fores Tamayo said language often plays a complicated role in the lives of many refugees’ experiences, including her own.
She said she wanted to highlight her poems in the two languages that are tied to her identity.
“When I wrote some of these poems, they were written in English first and then in Spanish. Other poems I wrote simultaneously,” she said. “I don’t talk about translation; I talk about interpretation,” she said.
See a video of Fores Tamayo reading her poem “Conflict/Conflicto” during a recent book launch event in San Antonio below:
