Erika L. Sánchez
Photo by Robyn Lindemann
Bio
Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. A poet, essayist, and fiction writer, she is the author of a young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers), a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and instant New York Times Bestseller; and the poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf), a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. She is a currently a Princeton Arts Fellow.
I am the daughter of formerly undocumented immigrants. My parents crossed the border in 1978. In many ways, my life has been has been defined by borders, both physical and metaphorical. For many years I asked myself, who do you think you are? As a woman of color, I have often questioned what I’m allowed to do, what I’m allowed to have. Poetry is what makes me feel most whole, most useful. Eternal. It’s how I grapple with unanswerable questions. Why do people inflict violence and abandon their humanity? Why are we here? I’m so grateful to be able to bring these issues to light through language. I’m so grateful to receive this generous award among brilliant writers. It reminds me that what I do matters and that I’m not alone.
"Saudade"
In the republic of flowers I studied
the secrets of hanging clothes I didn't
know if it was raining or someone
was frying eggs I held the skull
of words that mean nothing you left
between the hour of the ox and the hour
of the rat I heard the sound of two
braids I watched it rain through
a mirror am I asking to be spared
or am I asking to be spread your body
smelled like cathedrals and I kept
your photo in a bottle of mezcal
semen-salt wolf's teeth you should have
touched my eyes until they blistered
kissed the skin of my instep for thousands
of years sealed honey never spoils
won't crystallize I saw myself snapping
a swan's neck I needed to air out
my eyes the droplets on a spiderweb
and the grace they held who gave me
permission to be this person to drag
my misfortune on this leash made of gold