RITA WONG [9765]

Rita Wong

(Nacida en 1968) es una poeta canadiense.

Wong creció en Calgary, Alberta y actualmente vive en Vancouver, Columbia Británica. Es autora de dos libros de poesía. Su trabajo investiga las relaciones entre la justicia social, la ecología, la descolonización y la poética contemporánea. Wong es profesor asistente en la Universidad Emily Carr de Arte y Diseño, enseñando Estudios Críticos y Culturales.  Tiene otro curso en el desarrollo, cultivo contemplaciones Ecológica, interculturales e interdisciplinarios de agua. 

Es también instructora invitada en la Universidad de Miami.

Educación

Wong se graduó con un BA (Hons) en 1990 en la Universidad de Calgary. Recibió títulos de maestría en 1992 de la Universidad de Alberta y en 1996 de la Universidad de British Columbia. En 2002 recibió su doctorado de la Universidad Simon Fraser.

Biblografía:

POESÍA:

forage. Nightwood Editions, 2007. ISBN 0-88971-213-1

monkeypuzzle. Vancouver: Press Gang, 1998. ISBN 0-88974-088-7.

sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books, 2008)

REVISTAS:

"Decolonizasian: Reading First Nations and Asian Relations in Literature", in Canadian Literature, forthcoming (issue 1999, March 2009).[6]

"Market Forces and Powerful Desires: Reading Evelyn Lau's Cultural Labour", in Kam Louie and Tseen Khoo (eds.), Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP. 2005.

"Re Sounding Dissent", in Open Letter, 2004.

"Troubling Domestic Limits: Reading Border Fictions Alongside Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai", in BC Studies 140 (Winter 2003/04): 109-24.

"Globalization and Poverty as Violence Against Women." in Paul Taylor (ed.) The Heart of the Community: the Best of the Carnegie Newsletter. Vancouver: New Star Books, 2003. 227-28.

"Historical fictions, or when is an arrival not an arrival?" in K. Love (ed.) Facing History: Portraits from Vancouver. Vancouver: Presentation House and Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002. 38-39.

"Influences", in Contemporary Verse 2 25.1 (Summer 2002): 79-80.

"Partial Responses to the Global Movement of People", in West Coast Line 34.3, No. 33 (Winter 2001): 105-19.

"Market Forces and Powerful Desires: Reading Evelyn Lau's Cultural Labour", in Essays on Canadian Writing 73 (Spring 2001): 122-40.

"The I in Migrant", in West Coast Line 33.3, No. 30 (Winter 2000): 105-8.

Interview, by Larissa Lai. In West Coast Line 33.3, No. 30 (Winter 2000): 72-82.

"An Intelligent and Humane Response", in Kinesis (November 1999): 12, 17.

"Writing History in Fiction", in Rice paper 4.1 (1998): 33.

"Asian Heritage Month in Vancouver: Building Community", in Kinesis (1997): 16.

"Jumping on Hyphens", in Makeda Silvera (ed.) The Other Woman: Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1994. 117-53.

"Have You Eaten Yet? Two Interviews", in Edna Alford and Claire Harris (eds.) Kitchen Talk. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1992. 149-57.

Blues del denim

hay montañas de denim en mi placard

ropas usadas bien gastadas, jeans andrajosos,

pantalones ajustados adolescentes, monos jardineros holgados,

años de pegajosas estampidas hacia afuera

nada hay entre 

las ropas de trabajo de los obreros & yo

sus cincuenta centavos el sudor de un día

me abraza fuerte cada mañana

los dedos derechos de mi tía

con las demandas de trabajo a destajo

cómo producía docenas de jeans bajo la luz tenue

una víctima más para la ropa casual

el algodón recolectado por trabajadores hambrientos

golpeados dentro de la estructura & sumisión en fábricas remotas

disimulados dentro de las ofertas de las secciones de negocios

el denim negro con dedos amputados

moviendo hilos sangrientos desde los bolsillos

anudando en mi pecho mientras miro en mi placard

no encuentro nada para usar

nada, eso es, pero

el desgarro de una malla desteñida delgada

desbordando el trabajo dentro de la visión del consumidor

harapiento con culpa, ignorancia, miedo

pero aún así se tensa una pancarta

en el viento para el cambio

Publicado en http://blogs.eciad.ca/ritawong/poems/

Traducido del inglés por Myriam Rozenberg

denim blues

there are denim mountains in my closet:

well-worn cutoffs, raggedy jeans,

adolescent skintight pants, baggy prairie overalls,

years of tacky stampede outfits

nothing comes between me &

the labour of the garment workers

their fifty cents a day sweat

hugs me tight every morning

my auntie’s fingers nimble

with the demands of piecework

how she churns dozens of jeans by dim lamplight

one more casualty for casual wear

cotton picked by hungry workers

beaten into fabric & submission in far-off factories

dissembled into department store offerings

black denim with amputated

fingers waving bloody threads from pockets

knotting in my chest as i look in the closet

find nothing to wear

nothing, that is, but

thin faded gauze ripping open,

spilling labour into consumer vision,

ragged with guilt, ignorance, fear

but still rippling, a necessary banner

in the wind for change

a wandering daughter’s grammar

she congregates with nomads

attentive & occasionally settling

reconjugates self with each meeting:

i am self

I is personae

i & stolen grammar

hoarded carefully in bare hands & forgotten pockets

aiya! hai been dou ah!

good fortune, she’s a tough cookie

will bend & trace those words to follow black, black hair

the sound between her bare thighs as she walks & sidesteps

mimics & repels the roles imposed upon her

remember: timidity begets timidity

speak up, girl!

lip: to be used as a verb whenever possible–she lips backbone, a daily necessity this slow road through thickets

tongue: caught between the command performance of communication & her tongue’s own slippery dance. thrust into the chasm of speak or be spoken for.

breast: in conjunction with chicken evokes fear. in conjunction with lover, a welling, a swelling, of touch & of shyness

knuckle: layers of work ethic, prone to cracks & dryness, punishment in a harsh climate

back: her neural arch supports the clan’s full frontal reunion, genealogies writing themselves before her wary eyes

liver: proteins of endearment, this interrogative organ delivers feast into fuel, water into blood

guilt: a way of life, can be slowly unset by the beating heart’s optimism. atriums of responsibility a syntax of action.

sisterhood: this anatomy includes mother if possible

a poem from forage:

canola queasy

“In April 1997, Monsanto pulled two varieties of genetically engineered canola seeds from the Canadian market after testing revealed that at least one of the patented herbicide-tolerant transgenic varieties contained an ‘unexpected’ gene. This was after 60,000 bags of the seeds had already been sold throughout Western Canada.” – Mae-Wan Ho

vulture capital hovers over our dinner tables, covers hospitals alurid shade of canola, what gradient decline in the stuck market, what terminal severity in that twenty-year monopoly culled the patent regime, its refrain of greed, false prophets hawk hydrophobic that is oily platitudes to justify rapacity as they engineer despair in those brilliant but foolish yellow genetically stacked prairie crops. refrain from greed, i want to advise them, but how to converse with the wilfully profitable stuck in their monetary monologue? head-on collisions create more energy but who gets obliterated? despite misgivings i blurt, don’t shoot the messy angels with your cell-arranging blasts, don’t document their properties in order to pimp them. the time for business-as-usual is over. it died with the first colonial casualty. stop the clock. hey bloated monstrosity: transcribe your ethics first or your protein mass shall turn protean mess and be auctioned off in the stacked market and so you shall endlessly reap your cussed stunts.

(dedicated to Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer who was threatened and sued by Monsanto because genetically engineered canola happened to blow into his fields)