Roy G. Guzmán was born in Honduras and raised in Miami, FL. He is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Minnesota, and his work has appeared or will appear in Winter Tangerine, Juked, Assaracus, Public Pool, Up the Staircase Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, Connotation Press, and Word Riot. Roy’s poem, “Restored Mural for Orlando,” was turned into a chapbook, and with poet Miguel M. Morales, he is editing the Pulse/Pulso anthology, honoring the victims of the Orlando nightclub tragedy. Website: roygguzman.com; Twitter: @dreamingauze.---------
I am tired of grieving for us. I am tired of having to justify why my queer and trans families deserve opportunities. I am tired of others assuming they have to speak for us, co-opt our languages to police our bodies. Leave us abandoned everywhere.
The writers whose work I have gathered here are fighting against silence, oppression, marginalization, racism, stereotypes, heteronormativity, the nightmare of patriarchy, a broken healthcare industry, countries whose violence is an extension of the United States’ failed international policies, a culture that gaslights them, a culture that thinks it owns their vaginas, a culture that leaves them hanging, a culture that upholds incomplete notions of beauty, a culture that again and again and again misses the point.
Carry these writers’ words in your purses, in your hearts. Put them next to your rosaries, next to your most valuable possessions.
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Ashley M. Jones, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Audrey Gradzewicz, Jacqueline Balderrama, Alexandra Lytton Regalado, D. Allen, Maitreyi Ray, and Luis Lopez-Maldonado don’t need introductions. They need you to listen.
Listen.