SPS Observes Hispanic Heritage Month

Visitors explore the importance of cultural identity

BY KRISTIN DUISBERG

On Thursday, Sept. 15, St. Paul’s School kicked off its observation of Hispanic Heritage Month with Chapel speakers Willie Perdomo and Sandra Guzman. Perdomo is the New York poet laureate and a New York Puerto Rican known for “The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon,” a collection of poems that narrates the imagined life a Puerto Rican salsa band percussionist from the 1960s and 70s; Guzman, an Emmy award-winning producer, writer and documentary filmmaker whose work reflects her identity as a Caribbean-born Boricua raised in New Jersey, is the editor of a forthcoming anthology of Latin American women writers, “Machetes Under Our Beds.”

During Chapel, Guzman and Perdomo each read a short piece of their work and then spoke about the importance of cultural identity. Posing the rhetorical question of whether Hispanic Heritage Month really matters, Guzman answered herself with, “Yes, yes, yes. Beyond the proclamations, the mariachi music and the soggy tacos, it is important for us to recognize the everyday Latino and Hispanic American heroes who gave and continue to give themselves to this nation.” She spoke about her father, a decorated Korean War veteran whose “equal devotion to his dual cultural heritage” as a Puerto Rican American she described as “at the heart of the Hispanic American experience.”

Drawing on the Caribbean archipelago as a metaphor, Perdomo provided his own perspective on the idea of deriving one’s identity from multiple sources and discussed the role art plays for him in integrating various aspects of his experience. “My trajectory as a Puerto Rican writer in this world, from the Caribbean, from the diaspora — is a fractured one,” he said. “And all my efforts to capture that experience have been about putting the pieces of my identity together until it’s a whole.”

Following their Chapel Talk in Memorial Hall, Guzman and Perdomo visited classes, met with the Latinx Society and had lunch with students and faculty in the Lower dining room. Students asked the duo questions about writing and the creative process, and Perdomo and Guzman reiterated one of the central messages from their Chapel Talk: while we can’t all be poets, we all have the opportunity — and a responsibility — to bear witness.