In the Spirit of a Dream: Writing Biographies in Free Verse as Artivism

When asked to join illustrator, Alina Chau, on her unique biography collection, IN THE SPIRIT OF A DREAM: 13 Stories of American Immigrants of Color*, I was immensely honored. While the concept for the book was not fully formed, both Alina and our editor, Kait Feldman knew they wanted the text to be lyrical and full of dignity for immigrants. As an immigrant, a poet, and artivist, it was a joy to embrace the challenge of writing thirteen different biographies in verse about immigrants both known and unknown. 

The project was clear about another thing – that it was going to push back against the nasty anti-immigrant narrative in the popular consciousness at the time and that was coming primarily from the former president and his administration’s ideas of white supremacy. We chose to focus specifically on people of color immigrants for this reason. Historically, immigrants, especially those coming from places not in Europe (though there are some exceptions), are blamed and targeted for the ills of society. We can recall the Chinese Exclusion Act or Operation Wetback or the Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII or the horrific anti-Asian, anti-Mexican, anti-Central America, anti-Muslim, and more bigotry, xenophobia, and racism we see on our streets and in our policies today. It was important to focus on illustrating the dignity, resilience, and joy in the lives of immigrants of color to dispel misconceptions rooted in these prejudices about who we are as immigrants. IN THE SPIRIT OF A DREAM is a marvelous display of immigrant creativity by everyone involved -- from the immigrants featured, to each of the thirteen different artists (all either immigrants or children or grandchildren of immigrants) chosen to illustrate each great immigrant, to the creator, and editor. 

As the sole writer on the project, I focused on making a heart connection with the immigrants featured as I researched and spent time with their life stories. With each interview I read, each statement they made, or in what was written about them, I was looking for the humanity within each person, outside of what they did in the world. I looked for the way their spirit dreamt. I tried to tap into the ephemeral idea of their dream not wholly in this world but in the realm of possibility, their wish, as the sustenance to my writing about them. Making this heart connection supports one of the most fundamental things about writing poetry – as Billy Collins said, “Poetry is the history of the human heart.” It is the mantra and the model which guides so much of my work. Though I spent many days researching each person, once I understood what their true longing was, I was able to write a poem to describe their life. 

When writing biographies in verse, however, there is a delicate balance the poet must maintain between fact and poetry. How do you make a fact – necessary if you are to be true to the subject you are writing about – poetic? I called upon my craft as a poet, tools such as metaphor and simile, personification, repetition, line breaks, imagery, figurative language to not only relay facts about each person featured but to make the work lyrical. For example, when writing about Anousheh Ansari, I read that she was born in Iran and came to the United States fleeing war and that she learned many languages and wanted to be an astronaut. Below is the free verse biography I wrote for her and in red are some of the tools of poetic craft (or facts) used to tell Anousheh’s story.

Anousheh Ansari

With her little feet planted on Iranian soil (personification)

Anousheh wished to be an astronaut, (her heart connection, essential to poetry)

fly into space and soar among the stars (imagery)

but the Iranian Revolution came (fact)

and the horrors of that war

tried to wipe those dreams away (personification of the horror/war)

until she came to the United States (fact)

where the many languages that

surrounded her flew into her ears (personification of languages)

and stayed—English, French, and Russian (a list always creates rhythm)

never forgetting the beloved Persian sounds 

of her birth place. (heart connection) 

The languages of math, science, engineering (list & fact)

became her strength however (personification) 

her ticket to become (more personification)

the first female private space explorer (fact) (repetition of the f or s sound in the next 3 lines)

and the first astronaut of Iranian descent (fact)

to float among the stars. (imagery)

– Aida Salazar

IN THE SPIRIT OF A DREAM

I was mindful of the balance between fact and poetry when writing each of the thirteen poems. Sometimes, I let my own muse guide me and I am not aware of what I am doing while I write and the poem comes together when I edit. For some lines, a fact is a fact. What comes before and after lends the fact its lyricism. Also, the order in which things are listed or the repetition of words, letters, sounds can add rhythm. What else do you see or hear? This is the magic of poetry, the many layers both obvious and nuanced, intentional and not, that lie within each poem waiting to be discovered and felt by the reader. 

*IN THE SPIRIT OF A DREAM: 13 Stories of American Immigrants of Color will be released on December 7, 2021 by Scholastic. 

Aida Salazar is the award-winning and acclaimed author of books such as LAND OF CRANES, THE MOON WITHIN JOVITA WORE PANTS and A SEED IN THE SUN. She is also a translator, an activist and a founding member of Diverse Verse.