Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl

The word vos/z, spoken in Salvadoran Spanish, means you and also means voice. If the word ends in s it means you; ending in z it means voice. Leticia Hernandez-Linares s poetry comes in somewhere between the S and Z, and it is, like bread, like music, for everyone. The way Leticia shares her stories speaks to the hybridity of the cultural and literary histories she hails from. Leticia s poemsongs are her personal flor y canto. Mexican and Central American indigenous ancestors combined the concepts in xochitl, in cuicatl (in flower, in song) to define poetry the poetic oral tradition they used to teach, engage, and philosophize. Leticia s writing excavates the faces of women in her family, silences in her community, and shapes their stories into a poetry that sings, and other times dances on the page. I am cut from Santa Ana, El Salvador mujer steel, y que orgullo, says Leticia.