Literary Essay-Martin Espada

Martin Espada (born in Brooklyn in 1957) is a Latino writer who has written many poems, most of them relating to Hispanic rights and white prejudice. His poems “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School”, “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson”, and “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877” all relate to this issue. Through these poems, Espada makes an effort to raise awareness, expresses his feelings, and demonstrates the real-life consequences of racism.

In one poem, Espada uses a specific example in order to raise awareness about racism. He writes about how people tend to mistrust and fear the things that they don’t understand. The poem, “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School” is about a principal who is using the bathroom when he hears boys talking in Spanish. “The only word he recognizes/ is his own name…So he decides/ to ban Spanish/ from the bathrooms”. This shows his distrust of his own students—but only the Spanish-speaking ones. Espada chose to use words like “constipates” to show the principal’s discomfort, and “relax” to show his relief at being able to understand every word being spoken. The principal is taking away the students’ right to express themselves in their first language, in one of the only private places in the school. His fear of what he doesn’t know “constipates” him, causing him to become hostile towards Hispanic students.

The poem “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson” shows Espada’s wish to change peoples’ beliefs and correct their bias by taking a more aggressive tone. “Whenever my name is mispronounced/ I want to buy a toy pistol/ put on dark eyeglasses…hijack a busload/ of Republican tourists from Wisconsin/ force them to chant anti-American slogans/ in Spanish…” His anger does not come only from when people mispronounce his name, it comes from all of the times that he has been confronted with racism. Republicans from Wisconsin are a stereotypically prejudiced group of white people, and Espada uses this stereotype to represent all racists. Wanting them to chant anti-American slogans in Spanish may be a literal wish, but it also represents a broader wish—that prejudiced people accept those against whom they discriminate, and see the error of their ways. Then Espada writes, “…and wait/ for the bilingual SWAT team/ to helicopter overhead/ begging me/ to be reasonable”. Needing a bilingual SWAT team shows the barrier that language can cause, and means that the Republicans would be saved by the people that they have been fighting against.

The poem “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877”, describes a historical event. In every stanza except for the last, he repeats the words “more than”, expressing that more than all the horrors in the photograph, what makes him feel saddest and angriest are “…the faces of the lynching party:/ faded as pennies from 1877, a few stunned/ in the blur of execution/ a high collar boy smirking, some peering/ from the shade of bowler hats, but all/ crowding into the photograph”. He is disgusted by the fact that everyone attending the execution felt that it was a show, a form of entertainment, not the murder of two (probably innocent) humans. Mexicanos were treated as such inferiors to white people that their hanging was a festive (not solemn) event. In the first stanza, Espada writes, “More than the moment/ when forty gringo vigilantes/ cheered the rope/ that snapped two Mexicanos/ into the grimacing sleep of broken necks”. Vigilantes are self-appointed law enforcers. The reader can make the interpretation that these Mexicanos were not hanged for disobeying the law, but because of the bias of the vigilantes and the town.

Espada has reached out to readers through his poems, raising awareness of the world’s racism and its real-life effects, as well as his personal feelings. In these poems, he explores how language barriers can cause mistrust between groups of people, and how that effects the way people interact. He also makes the reader aware of the consequences of all this fear and prejudice. Espada’s work is very inspiring, and, if introduced into school curriculum, could greatly impact peoples’ beliefs and make a difference in our lives.