UC Berkeley Alumni Association Interviews Barbara Jane Reyes

For California Magazine, Emily Wilson spends time with Barbara Jane Reyes, recently featured at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum as part of the "Pilipinx American Library, a non-circulating library in the museum’s Resource Room." Wilson explains, "Filled with shelves and tables of books by Filipino Americans, not to mention beanbag chairs for lounging, the library offers a space to experience text through communal readings, workshops, and performances." From there: 

While such events create an important community for Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike, Reyes reminds readers that her poetry doesn’t need a platform to exist. “I am not your ethnic spectacle,” she asserts in her most recent poetry collection, Invocation to Daughters. “I write whether or not you invite my words.”

The author of five books of poetry including Invocation, a finalist for the 2018 California Book Award, Reyes came to California from Manila when she was 2 years old and grew up in the Bay Area. At UC Berkeley, where Reyes planned to study English, she gravitated to works by female icons Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Cal Professor Emerita Maxine Hong Kingston. Reyes ultimately completed her degree in Ethnic Studies while getting involved in the Kearny Street Workshop, where she found support for her work among the “literary elders” of the Asian Pacific American community. Now Reyes, who teaches Filipino literature at University of San Francisco, is returning the favor and mentoring a new generation of young Filipina writers.

Recently, Reyes sat down with us to talk about the importance of the library, growing attention to Filipino culture in the Bay Area, and Filipina author Jessica Hagedorn, whose award-winning novel Dogeaters convinced Reyes to be a writer.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you decide you wanted to be a poet?

I had always been writing. I don’t know if I was conscious it was poetry I was gravitating towards until other writers pointed it out to me. Maybe in college, I was told, “Oh, wow, so you’re a poet then.” But that was because I had a tendency toward lines that did sound like poetry. I read William Blake and went to City Lights Books when I was in high school. But I had always been writing. I remember a fictionist said to me when I had written a short story, “Oh, so you write fiction as well.” That was the first time it dawned on me a writer chooses a genre. (Laughs.)

Learn more at California magazine.