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Professor Tina Escaja Inspires Women around the World

written by Ann Jandafor Venus Rising Magazine

Sagittarius 06 Issue

Tina Escaja teaches Latin American and Spanish Literature at the University of Vermont. She also travels throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe speaking to audiences about poetry, her perceptions about the state of womanhood, and her vision for women. A long-time friend and mentor of mine, I often, ask myself, “What would Tina do in this situation?” Recently, I met with Tina to find out more about what makes her such an interesting and unique woman.

Where were you born?
I was born in Zamora, Spain, in 1965.

What was it like growing up in Spain?
Spain is a complex place, full of different languages, cultures and traditions. I grew up in the outskirts of Barcelona, in the Catalan Region, but my origins are Castilian. My family coexisted in this neighborhood of working class people with a variety of groups from other areas of Spain. We shared our economic struggle and huge, ugly buildings that were made of concrete. This cluster of working class people is only representative of a certain segment of Spanish society. Different class and regional groups I am sure had a completely different experience.

What inspired you as a child?
My childhood was not particularly happy, or at least that is how I remember it. It was very difficult to define myself within the restrictions of the socio-economic and intellectual limitations I experienced. I felt like a weird child—someone who questioned the things that surrounded her but without any reference or sense of support at all. I often felt, or was made to feel, that something was wrong with me and not with what I experienced as a very faulty system of values.

What was it like being a young woman in a Spanish culture?
This was part of my questioning. The “norm” attached to the role of women was quite determined and I felt a visceral opposition to this role. But Spain was not at all different from other places I have known in terms of assumptions about women. Unfortunately, my parents were particularly conventional in their understanding of my role in life: be married, have kids, no need to study, and the sort.

How have things changed since Franco?
Spain is a completely different country from the time of Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted almost 40 years. I was ten in 1975, when Franco died. I remember after his death a political and social effervescence. The move toward a modern, fully industrialized and democratic country was radical. Today visiting some areas of Spain is like moving into a futuristic, highly stylized landscape, which coexists with its more traditional, historical presence. I find the balance fortunate. However, I also feel that there is a “global” trend that makes people and countries more indiscernible. American culture and icons, for example, are found almost everywhere. I also find disheartening a general trend toward a lack of political engagement among younger people that was not the case, perhaps for obvious reasons, during Franco’s time. 

What are the biggest challenges that women face in Spain? at home? at work?
I believe the challenges are pretty much the same in Spain as they are in the United States. Women get less money than men for the same job. Women are expected to stay home with the kids, even leave their careers for that purpose. Women are the ones that bear the worst with the double duty: family/work. We are, pretty much in the same spot of a fight far from being won, or at least resolved. Perhaps in the U.S. there is more theoretical awareness. But in the practice, we are still fighting for the same basic rights. 

What brought you to the U.S? What do you like the most about living here?
My intellectual and economic conditions were quite precarious in Spain. I always loved to learn, but I did not have many chances. It was a struggle to simply get through high school and the University. I had to work, hard, in the morning, and would go to school at night smelling of fish (I worked selling fish all during this period). Then, I worked selling chicken, and I would run to the University evening classes with barely a few hours of sleep (and long hours of heavy market work). The unemployment rate in Spain was 20%, the highest in Europe. I felt trapped. When I saw an ad at the University for a student-exchange program in the U.S., I applied. Perhaps it is a cliché, but this country gave me the opportunity to learn and grow.

What do you like the least?
Current politics. The rampant imperialism. The virtual numbness from many American people regarding the consequences of their government’s actions. Like families being killed in Iraq, as we speak, as a consequence of the U.S. invasion, but most people seem completely uninterested, oblivious, concerned as they are with their immediate life and a self-centered set of values attributed to the nation.

What brought you to Vermont?
I was offered a job as a Spanish professor at the University of Vermont right after I finished my dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania.

What inspires you to write poetry? What are your poems about?
My interest and motives have changed during my years of writing poetry. One of my first motivations, once in the U.S., was the interaction between person and machine, between the poet and the big black computer screen (it used to be black), and the possibilities for exchange. Using the pen name Alm@ Pérez,  I wrote this e-book called “Respiración mecánica” (Mechanic Breathing) and two interactive poems entitled “VeloCity”. A few years later, I wrote a long book of poems, “Caída Libre” (“Free Falling”) about the anxiety and celebration of an epic process, rarely expressed in poetry in its roughest sense: conception, delivery, maternity. I attached this process to another epic of celebration and anxiety that spoke of the end of the millennium in New York City. The book ends with a sense of falling of Western values, inspired by the events of 9/11. But the segment “free” of the title (Falling Free) is one of hope. This book won an important international prize, the II Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía, Dulce María Loynaz, valued at over $12,000. The theme that interests me most right know is political commitment, and my current manuscript and art project is called “Bar Codes.”  

"Black Moon" From Bar Codes
By Tina Escaja, English Translation by Helen Wagg
 

Image by MJ Tobal                        Violent geology,
black moon in small, torn
veins.
A fallen asteroid transforms the plain
into a notable wounded summit,
silent and violet-
hued.
Dried blood harbors that moving eye
buried
in the new geography,
that celestial body in a mineral landscape
that from the heart
swells the fist,
from the word, the lance,
from the pain
the tectonic geometry of fear.
Unraveling a fabric of fictitious relief
while the moon in its wounded core
demands
sanity and worth.

There is no excuse.

Please go to www.tinaescaja.com to read more of Tina's original poetry.

Whose poetry do you enjoy the most? Why?
Poetry written by women. This is out of personal interest and my profession as a literary critic. It is a political move as well: recovering women’s voices, questioning the canon, pointing at the discrimination and violence toward women expressed through poetry, are part of my interests and themes.

What do you like about Pedro Almodovar films? How do they portray the current state of womanhood? How are his films received by Spanish audiences? by U.S. audiences?
I used to adore (and teach) Pedro Almodóvar’s films. I love, in particular, the irreverence of his first films, such as “Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón” (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap) or “Entre tinieblas” (Dark Habits). In these early films, Almodóvar was expressing a celebration of a liberated Spain that clashed with the constraints of Franco’s regime. Then, Almodóvar moved to a more stylized, Hollywood-like filmmaking. He never lost his ability to be irreverent and free, but, in my opinion, he lost his freshness. This is also a process of maturity, unavoidable. Almodóvar’s portraits of women are ambivalent: often liberated, strong, professional women, but attached to certain clichés of womanhood that are problematic, such sentimentality and dependence on men. I believe his representations of LGBT issues are among Almodóvar’s best accomplishments.

About his audience, I would say that, in general, Almodóvar is very much loved by a section of the Spanish public. A more conservative audience would never see or approve of a movie made by him. I suspect this is also true for U.S. audiences.

What do you find most fulfilling about teaching?
Students. The interaction with students is always a treat. I particularly love creating a change in perceptions, a space for questioning and awe. Whenever I feel I managed to produce some impact, I have a sense of accomplishment and connection.

What is life like with your husband, Uwe? How did you meet? How does he support your career?
Uwe Heiss is my partner of 11 years. We met in Nicaragua.  I was traveling south Latin América; he was traveling north. My first stop after accompanying a group of UVM students to Honduras was Nicaragua. I met Uwe when looking for hotels and he offered to go with me to visit the University and find this bookstore. We got lost in the search for the store and ended up in a cathedral in ruins, heavily guarded and fenced, where a German crew was conducting a documentary. We managed to enter that surreal space filled with angels, neo-classical vaults and mirrors set for the film. That was our place of connection. Afterward, we kept meeting in cathedrals of the world. The first cathedral after Nicaragua was in Bogotá, Colombia. We had continued our travels but were settled to meet in Bogotá a certain date and time. When I received an e-mail from Uwe saying that he got a plane ticket to Bogotá two days before our meeting day, I decided to change my own ticket without telling him. I arrived two days earlier to a Cathedral in full celebration. I sat at the rear benches, and Uwe soon came as well. We then kept meeting two days before the established date in cathedrals for years, during our long distance relationship (he used to live in Switzerland), until I once forgot in Cuba, but he still found me in the streets of a crowded Havana!

Uwe continues finding me when I get disoriented, in life and with my work. He is my anchor and a big part of my sense of gravity. We live a fresh, creative life together with our kids. It is easy and smooth, however complex life with kids is. I love that I can be myself and be with him, with no disruption. This is perhaps his best way to support me and my career. Uwe also gave up a lot and created a lot as well by choosing to stay in Vermont. This is a unique path for a successful man to take, and he did it without hesitation.

What do you enjoy most about motherhood? What do you find most difficult?
My daughter, Alex, is seven and my daughter, Vera, is five. The most amazing thing about motherhood is seeing your kids grow, being a witness to their changing perceptions of the world, which affects your own perceptions. The most difficult thing perhaps, besides the practical matters, is to try to smooth that entering into the world, to find a balance between protection and empowerment. To help them grow. We are not taught to be parents, or perhaps we have ill models of parenthood, so being a parent is a great challenge.

What is your advice to women on living a happy and fulfilling life?
Be yourself; enjoy what you choose to do, and do it. It is easier said than done, but it is a must. There is so much demand on us that it is hard to find space for what one really wants to be. But we should be able to find this space and rearrange priorities to make this happen.

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