D.C. resident and award-winning poet Mayamerica Cortez was honored in June by the deputy foreign minister of El Salvador for strengthening Salvadoran culture through literature.
Cortez was born in El Salvador but emigrated to the U.S. in 1980 to escape her country’s civil war, leaving her three children behind for a time until she had a stable life here in the Washington area. She published her first book in El Salvador in 1976, “Lumbre de Soledad” (“Fire of Solitude”), but took 19 years off before publishing her next piece as she struggled to bring her children to the U.S. and adjust to life here. She recently read some of her work to Montgomery County residents at a Gaithersburg library.
What inspires you to write poems?
Everything — I would put it all together by saying love. Children, parents, life in general. At first I didn’t want to share anything I wrote about — I would hide it under my pillow when my father was around, but I learned to enjoy sharing my writing. I needed a way to convey the similar situations I think everybody goes through.
How does the U.S. compare to El Salvador?
The two places are both beautiful to me. Both have so many difficulties, too. I always believe that wherever you are, that is your place, your country, your homeland. Everything is within you.
What are your favorite things you’ve written?
Maybe “Letters for My Children.” It was very difficult for me to be away from them and I wanted them to know how much I loved them and why I was moving us.
At the library, I read one called “My Mother Has Not Died,” because I don’t believe in death. I read another, called “Indigenous Laments,” which I wrote to all immigrants to speak about the pain and the remembrance of your own country, your own culture and the challenge to be part of another culture. Poetry is something for everybody, it is good for the soul.
