 I'm sitting with Joe Jimenez. My name is Elizabeth Rodriguez. Do you might introduce yourself, Joe, as a writer, as a creative? Sure. My name is Joe Jimenez. I live here in San Antonio. I teach 12th grade at Thomas Jefferson High School. I have a collection of poetry entitled The Possibilities of Mud. I recently released a young adult novel entitled Bloodline and I'm the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas Red Hand Poetry Prize. Congrats. Thank you. And will you tell us a little bit about your latest work? My latest work, the young adult novel, is really a retelling of Hamlet. When I was in high school, I was deathly afraid of Shakespeare in those days and even perhaps today in classrooms, you're given a book, you're told to read, answer questions at the end. I really had no way to access the text. I thought it was a really good reader, but looking at Elizabethan writing, I was, ah, this makes no sense to me. I don't know what it means. I guess I'm incompetent or inadequate in some sense. And so it really intimidated me up until I had to face my greatest fear as an English major at Pomona College and actually take a semester of Shakespeare. I was blessed to have a professor named Martha Andreessen who, for the most part, helped us dive in because we were going to perform a play. And it was such a big difference between sitting at your desk all by yourself, reading and answering questions, because God forbid you talk to anyone back then in the classroom. And you've been in some classrooms today because then you would have been cheating by talking or collaborating. Now, collaboration is something that we embrace in classrooms. In early 90s, late 80s, not so much. So she had us perform and we had to work in groups. So we would read and talk amongst each other and build meaning that way, which, in all shapes and forms, that was my access point for Shakespeare. And so writing this novel, I said I'm going to write about something that I think my students should have access to. I don't believe that British literature is, is a, should be a requirement for students. It might be elective, but I think it's super imperialist and there's still colonial mindset that, oh, we must worship the British and the English crown. Because, because of who they are, I think students in high school should, um, should spend more time in American Lit, I mean junior year's American Lit, but it's just when you. Right, right. Nonetheless, the um the novel is a retelling of Hamlet. I used the second person because I wanted it to be a direct address to really young Latino readers. It's a novel that asks the question, do you have to have a father in your life to be a good man? The protagonist name is Abram. He is raised by his grandmother, have through these, and her partner, Becky. The big challenge in the beginning of the book or the big conflict is that because Abram is having difficulties managing his temper, he's getting into, he's getting into trouble at school by fighting, we're through fighting. And the grandmother's really kind of like last ditch effort to save him is to bring his uncle Glalio into the house because she's thinking that perhaps a man can can show him how to be a, how to be a man really. The part of how Becky is like, oh hell no, you don't need a man, you need good people, period. And that's how the novel begins. And um, what has your experience been with, uh, working with the youth? Um, here at Macondo? Or in general, because you also teach, right? I teach fourth grade, yeah, I'll focus on Macondo. I think this is the first year that we've had the Macondo young writers, you know, thank God for Lorian having this vision of being more inclusive of young people. I think the idea of younger voices who have access to experiences that as a 39 year old, I have no access. These are not my stories. I couldn't be telling these stories in 10, 20, 30 years. These people who are 18, 19, they'll be writing the great novels that are, that our people need to read. They have a breadth of knowledge that I think for so many reasons, either they don't value or they don't have the confidence or they don't believe it. They don't think it's even valued or even matters. So I'm hoping that this, you know, these past few days, one of the lessons that kids have taken to heart is this idea that you do matter, that your stories are important, that people need to hear these things. And in that, you are the only person who can tell this story, your story, whether it's a poem, whether it's a memoir, which is what we're working on today. Either way, the world deserves, our community deserves to have your voice in it. Right. And will you tell us what drives your own creativity? I never wanted to be a writer when I was younger. I didn't have it in the set in my room and say, gosh, when am I going to be an author? Oh, I really want to write a book. I did like to read, but it wasn't like that was my main goal. When I was younger, my main goal was to get a good job, get a house, get a truck, have a family and get dogs. That was my goal. And then it's so funny when I think about it. When MySpace was about, I had this really horrible MySpace, which is super cheesy, but I posted some of the things that I wrote in there in a photographer from Los Angeles named Dino Dinko read something I wrote about ironing. And he emailed me about creating a short film about this for a film festival. Oh yeah. Oh, thanks. I was like, yeah, sure, go for it. And we ended up pitching the idea to the London Fashion and Film Festival, and it was fun. So we made a film and from that point forward, I began thinking, well, I might take this more seriously. I might actually pursue it. And so then I ended up attending an MFA program. I focused on poetry, which is my first love. But even if you read Bloodline, you see the elements of poetry, there's lyricism and the novel. In terms of how I create, my biggest challenge is time. I think it's kind of like when I was writing about this the other day, but it's kind of like when you're poor, growing up, and you don't have a lot of food. Every piece, everything you have matters. You have to make the best out of what you have, and you should be grateful for what you have. You should always want more, of course, I think, especially when it's something that nourishes you. But at the end of the day, it comes down to just making do with what you have. Because my time is so spare, I have summers as a high school teacher, I have summers, I have Thanksgiving break, and then I have Christmas break where I can really write. And so so much of my creative process really just pivots on how much time I have to work on something. Right now, I'm really interested in essays and nonfiction. So I've written them. I recently wrote an essay, which I don't know if I'm going to read it this afternoon, but it's about a response to the events in Orlando. I'm looking at one particular video that I watched from time to time, which is are you familiar with RuPaul's Drag Race? Yeah, I've watched it a few times. It's not a show that I watch a lot, but every now and then I'll read about it on Facebook or somebody will tell me about one of the lip syncs. And this season they were super, super good. But there was one a couple of years ago that just broke my heart when I saw it. And it was two friends Raven and Jujube, and they had to perform against one another at some lip sync for your life. One of them is going to stay, one of them is going to go. And when Orlando happened, I really thought about just the sense of loss. I mean people's lives, of course, people's families being broken, relationships broken. But it reminded me a lot of the sense of loss that communities felt in the 80s and the 90s with HIV and AIDS. And just thinking there are people who should be here right now. I mean there's people who should be at Macondo right now. And my heart does grow heavy when I think about it, but they're not because in my opinion our government didn't respond fast enough. We were like people of color, like women, like poor people, like queers. You're expendable. It's okay if y'all are dying. It's not that big a deal. It's okay that cops are killing tons of black people. Bad cops are killing, you know, black people or brown people. It's permissible almost because people aren't valued. Their lives don't matter to mainstream or to people in high positions of authority. So I began thinking about just the sense these 49 people that were lost and the people who were injured, of course, their losses. But I thought then about what it means to lose friends. What it means to lose friends when you are isolated in the world. What it means to lose friends when you are weird or you have darkness inside you or when you're queer. In some way, your friends matter even more because it's your family. And when I thought about all the people who died in Florida and I thought about the fact that in 10 years, there'll be places like Mokko Rondol or family reunions or weddings and they should be there. And they really should. They really, really should and they won't. And it's not just one or two people because that would still matter if it was one or two people. But it's 49 people. And so I wrote an essay about that performance between juju and raven and what it means to perform loss and to perform sadness in that way of not wanting your friend to go because maybe you've never had a friend who really, really understood you. Maybe you've never had a friend who didn't judge you. Maybe you've never had a friend at all. And loneliness, I think, is an isolation for our communities. I think once you find that connection, places like Mokko Rondol and the places like LGBT bars or groups, it matters in a way that's so much different or so much more profound than just belonging to something like, oh yeah, I was on the big team in high school. Yeah, I was in the soccer team. That's important and that's valuable. I don't want to diminish that, but it is very different and very distinct when you finally come home to your tribe or to your people. What do you want to say to any LGBTQ youth that are thinking about using Mokko Rondol as a space for writing? I say go for it. I say go for it. Go for it. Go for it. The first thing you have to believe is that you deserve it. You deserve to have people invest in you and your skills to listen to your stories. And more than that, you deserve people to help train you and to help you say, you know, this is what I want to say. What's the best way I can say it? The first time we write something down, it may sound great. Maybe it won't, but at the end of the day, I think if you really want to make a commitment to yourself and to your writing, be committed to change, to change your writing, allow it to evolve, allow yourself to listen to other people's voices, to read other people's work, and really let yourself be the writer that you were meant to be, that you want to be. The only way that really happens is with access. If you're not getting in a school or a classroom, not getting in a church or not getting it at home or not making it happen for yourself, places like Mokko Rondol, this is how it happens. Doors are open for you. People love you and care about you and will open windows and open your eyes and open doors so that you can walk in and have a place at the table where the rest of us are sitting now. And on that note, how has Mokko Rondol created social change for help to create? Yeah, I think for me, in a very real way, I've seen that people who have gone through Mokko Rondol just embody the idea that writing can have a profound impact on the way the world works and how we believe and how we fit in the world and how we make spaces for ourselves. Sometimes I wonder, is spending time in my room or in my living room writing poems or working on a novel, does that matter as much as maybe building a house for somebody who doesn't have a house? In my heart, I don't think it matters as much as that. But at the same time, I would hope that the things that I write help shape people's ideas about what it means to be poor or what it means to want a better life for you and your family, what it means to survive difficult things. So I don't know that through my own eyes that writing in and of itself is the most profound way to change the world, but it is a way to change the world. And it's not to be competitive and say, oh, my way is superior to yours. It is, though, just for me being practical. I think if I wasn't writing, I would definitely be helping to build houses for people or to, I don't know, do something that still contributed. Everybody has, everybody has something to bring to the table. So the dish I bring to the meal happens to be poetry. Beautiful. And as we conclude our interview, is there anything you want to add? I'm just a great feeling of gratefulness. When I was growing up, I hated being told by my mother or my grandmother and all, it has a malo agradecido, you know, you're, you're ungrateful. I hate that, right? Because it was such a good insult. Like I want to be a grateful person. And I want to appreciate it. And so I hope that, that, um, and everything I do in my condo is that the sense of appreciation, the deep appreciation that I have for everything that the people who came before me from San Francisco's Neville's to all the people over the last 15, 20 years who've given so much to create these opportunities that, that they hear the appreciation from us. And I hope to repay that by, by helping build for future generations and by opening doors for, for people. By just vocalizing it. This is a very rare space and it's an important space. It's an endangered space, but we're living in dangerous times. It's a necessary space. Thank you. Thank you very much.