Therese Marie Konopelski Discusses Mucha Muchacha With Leticia Hernández-Linares

Learn about El Salvadoran poet Leticia Hernández-Linares and the history of San Francisco's Mission District from her conversation with Therese Marie Konopelski, recently published at the Letras Latinas blog. Their conversation marks the publication of Hernández-Linares's new book, Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl, and it extends out from there. In her introduction, Konopelski notes, "A self-identified 'mucha muchacha,' Leticia challenges gender norms and machismo. As a second generation Peruvian immigrant, I gained a greater appreciation of intergenerational Latinx wisdom by reading Mucha Muchacha. Hernández-Linares captures a District cheerfully overflowing with cumbia and 'too muchness,' a human rhythm that cannot be contained." From there: 

[Therese Konopelski]: I love the alliteration of the phrase “Mucha Mu-cha-cha.” One of your poems, "Too Much Girl," deals with institutions not intended for people of your background. What does being “too much girl” mean to you? How did your understanding of your identity in relation to society change when you entered graduate school?

[Leticia Hernández-Linares]: “Es mucho hombreesta mujer.” The male literary colleagues of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda infamously described this nineteenth century Cuban-Spanish writer as too much man. The recent article “Es mucha mujer esa mujer,” chronicles how even José Martí claimed there were minimal female qualities about this literary pioneer, suggesting her “rough” and “energetic” poetry’s quality benefited from her man-ish ways.

The descriptor, accusation of “too much” has followed me throughout my life. My laugh: too loud; my words: too blunt; my anger: too extreme; my dreams: too audacious. So when I heard the silly, patronizing song by Esquivel, I had an epiphany. Resilient mucha muchachas in my family and history shaped me, so why not embrace this? My poems often inspire me to write songs and I also weave song lyrics throughout my poems. Equivel’s verses prompted a conversation that developed across the two poems and throughout the book. I wanted to respond to the premise that there is a particular way to be girl, a woman.

Read on at Letras Latinas.