Slow Life

Slow Life is a hybrid collection of poetry, prose and translation. Slow Life takes on a lyric form to tell the stories about the speaker's family’s experience in Mexico and crossing the border; allowing research to cover the heavy experiences of each generation. The poetry in this collection is used to complicate some of these stories, to question the development of generations as a way to nurture and care for them. Translations of Elisa Diaz Castelo’s Principia are brought in to reflect similar themes of generation and religion, and how the two conflict with each other. Principia is one of Castelo’s most intimate poetry collections that braids lexicons of Spanish, Science, and religion, dealing with some of the same tensions as this collection. Similar to Slow Life, this collection includes language-play with code-switching, as words are chosen selectively throughout each piece, The term “Slow Life” comes from a saying coined by the speakers’ mother, which in her native tongue says “la vida hay que vivirla despacio” (life should be lived slowly). This way of living can be defined in many ways, though the speaker's mother defines it through a reflection of her life as a young girl in Mexico; what it means to live in a campo and be surrounded by nature. To her, slow life happens when you catch yourself breathing deeply and being grateful for your health, and your surroundings. In Slow Life, the speaker vaults lexicons of the previous generations native tongue, the English picked up from life in the United States, and that of culture and art. Slow Life aims to take a breath within each piece, to lay a life out on a desk, and to communicate love and care for relationships through language.