Write with Yosimar Reyes: A Look into One’s Personal History
On April 3, Yosimar Reyes led a workshop for students from Santa Monica College (SMC) to write down a significant moment of their lives at a Student Equity Center workshop.
Yosimar Reyes, 36, is a renowned poet and playwright originally from Guerrero, Mexico who grew up in San Jose, California. He was named one of “13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World” by The Advocate in 2015 and chosen to be a 2024 Creative Ambassador by the City of San Jose.
In the workshop, Reyes articulated why documenting one’s life is relevant and in what sense history, a term seemingly too broad, binds with everyone’s personal life. In the latter half of the workshop, he provided a protected time and space for students to simply enjoy writing.
Origin, Reyes remarked at the beginning of the workshop, is the subject one can find inspiration from when beginning to journal. He asked the students to put down the names of their parents on their worksheets, as well as what “origin” might commonly stand for.
Themes including parenting, family and familial changes lured Reyes into writing. According to Reyes, things that happened in the family often make a young kid react, them being ever more conscious of themselves and the outer environments in the process. He reckoned these origins can be as influential to a writer as artistic influences, like books and music.
“When I was sixteen, I started noticing things. I started questioning things. I started journaling. I think journaling helped me go on this quest of figuring out what things in my family happened to make me react,” Reyes said.
According to Reyes, documenting one’s life is important – especially because everyone’s life is “something worth telling” – while also making writing an enjoyable art for everyone. “Everybody has a book in them. All of you have the possibility to write a book,” he said.
“April is National Poetry Month,” Reyes said, setting the tone of the workshop. “I love books, I love writing, I love music, because it just teaches you empathy. I feel like to be human is to understand arts, to sit there and be like, ‘Ah, I don’t know what I’m feeling but I’m feeling something.’”
Reyes considered one’s life, or personal history – historia, the Spanish word chosen by Reyes – a combined result of “personal” plus “political” events. “The personal plus the political equals a story,” he said.
He asked students to draw up a timeline of their lives, after which students were to remark on an important political or social event happening that same year besides the “dots” on their timelines – the impactful years when what happened to them then might have altered their lives.
“Poet Audre Lorde teaches us that ‘the personal is political,’ meaning whatever happened in your personal life is impacted by whatever is happening politically,” Reyes said.
“And that’s why a lot of great writers write against what’s happening, right? We have James Baldwin, Toni Morrison … all these writers in the American canon that write during the time that’s happening …” Reyes said.
“But basically, what happens in politics affects your daily life. It’s very important for you to be aware of what’s probable,” said Reyes to the students.
Reyes continued on breaking down what writing intrinsically is about and how society and politics bind individuals’ seemingly unrelated lives together.
“When you read a story, there’s a theme to it. My themes that I write about are around immigrants, around undocumented immigrants, about family, around working class folks,” Reyes said. “Every writing has a theme. The theme is what the story is about.”
The beauty of storytelling, per Reyes, resides in the empathy that naturally arises when reading someone else’s life literature, to whose themes they relate to.
“There’s a difference between empathy and sympathy … Empathy is more like wow, for example, I don’t know your life, what you’ve been through, but I can imagine (that) you moving from the East Coast to here is an adjustment,” Reyes said. “So I know what it must feel like.”
“So what are the themes that you’re attracted to… that you inherently respond to, that make you feel like human, or that make you feel like connected to a person?” Reyes said.
Then there was silence. Students were writing down a fragment matching “a historical event” to “a moment that altered (their) lives”. For twenty minutes, only quiet writing happened.
“The workshop was great, and I liked the snacks!” said Shahab "Shay" Madi, an SMC student attendee, remarking on the casual vibes of the workshop after it was dismissed.
Another student attendee, Jazlyn Ocasio, said, “It felt more like a safe space because he has opened up, so it was easier to like, have a very open mind when writing.”
Reyes self-published his first book, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly, when he was 19. He then went on to be part of the publication of Queer in Aztlán, an anthology of “different poets writing about being brown, and also Mexican or Chicano” – “an important thing to know that we’re also present in our community.”
“One big dream” that Reyes has now is to publish his memoir that one day one may pick up when “(they) will be walking through an airport.”
For those interested in his works, a video of Reyes reading his poetry can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AAbUewEBRw