Poet, novelist, translator, and visual artist Moncho Ollin Alvarado is a Cihuayollotl (a gendered identity which literally means “heart of a woman”) and Xicanx (a gender-neutral term for Mexicans born and raised in the United States). Cihuayollotl and Xicanx are also reclamations for historical justice and perpetuations of “social movements that flourished in Mexican barrios, migrant camps, and factories in the United States during the last century, particularly at the height of the civil rights struggle,” in the words of essayist Mixcoatl Itzlacuiloh, indigenous name of Luis J Rodriguez.  

 

In this interview, I conversed with Alvarado on the Cihuayollotl and Xicanx as ethnosexual formations and literary œuvres; her poetry collection Greyhound Americans (2022), selected by Dianne Seuss as winner of the Saturnalia Book Prize; and her forthcoming trans historical novel in verse. 

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– Alton Melvar M Dapanas, October 2023

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Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): You identify as a Cihuayollotl which, owing to both classical Nahuatl language and ancient Aztec folklore, is a gendered identity which means, “heart of a woman.” Can you speak more about the Cihuayollotl and how it emigrates from westernized coinages such as queer, nonbinary, and trans? 

 

Moncho Ollin Alvarado (MOA): For me, Cihuayollotl emigrates from westernized coinages such as queer, nonbinary, and trans by adhering first to my indigenous heritage. When I came out, I was still looking for a word to hold all that I am, which honors my indigenous queer-cestors and resists westernized coinages. Cihuayollotl contains the energies of all I am; in westernized language it would be fem, masc, & the more. But in my culture, it was more of being born with all these energies, and there was one that lived you and still contained the other energies of the self. “Heart of a Woman” was the best English translation.

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AMMD: In his essay collection From Our Land to Our Land (Seven Stories Press, 2020), writer Luis J Rodriguez (Mixcoatl Itzlacuiloh), explains Xicanx as: 

 

…the most recent incarnation of a word that describes people who are neither totally Mexican nor totally what is conceived as American. It also removes the gender-specific ‘o’ and ‘a’ used in Spanish; Xicanx are all genders and gender non-conforming. This may not work for everyone, but it’s about inclusivity.

 

In terms of embodying colonial identities, can you explain how the ‘X’ becomes integral in naming those who were previously nameless?

 

MOA: The X confronts the long history of colonization, slavery, and systematic marginalisation by connecting me to my ancestors through decolonial consciousness, by inclusion of genders outside the western gender binary, by not adhering to a gender binary that does not work for me through a spanish and english language. In my past, there was a violence and destructive assimilation that destroyed a whole part of my ancestors that I will never hear from ever again and a culture that was not passed down because of that. The X confronts the gendered language by remembering where I come from, reclaiming my past to reject the coloniality of gender and an imposed history through a language that was not ours. 

 

AMMD: As a Cihuayollot and Xicanx writer and translator, in what ways can translation—linguistic, cultural, among others—into dominant European languages alter and distort the indigenous, pre-colonial genders and sexualities in the Global Majority?

 

MOA: The act of translation can disrupt the dominative European language that is imposed upon us in all levels of our lives by introducing new histories and ways to experience the world. New ways to know ourselves that are not driven by capitalism and colonization. There is more than one way to say or describe purple, just like there is no one way to be trans. Translation helped me by bridging those ideas of gender and self into the English language from my ancestors' culture, which altered and distorted the idea of being a trans woman with indigenous ancestry for me. I started to find home, family, and air in the distortion and altering. 

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AMMD: And how can platforms like fellowships, journals, courses, grants, workshops, magazines, residencies, publishers—and even writers, artists, and translators from the Global Majority like us—become complicit with this erasure and dismissal?

 

MOA: The complicit erasure and dismissal can happen if only one person or group becomes the only way to see a group of people or culture or history. For me the novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story“ Ted Talk illustrates my point as her conclusion responds to these erasure and dissmals by reiterating the importance of spreading diverse stories in opposition to focusing on just one and seeing people as more than just one incomplete idea. For me, that is a danger of having platforms showcasing only one or two voices for a majority, it erases the other stories and lived experiences of other authors, artists, translators, musicians, and so much more. It reminded me of how hard it was to find trans women jazz musicians or international trans woman poets or novelists. We have to demand that those platforms showcase other voices to stop erasure and dismissal from happening.

 

AMMD: As a Cihuayollot and Xicanx, in what ways have your award-winning poetry collection Greyhound Americans (Saturnalia Books, 2022) and your poetic œuvre subverted these globalizing and universalizing pronouncements? 

 

MOA: In the poem, “Amá Teaches Me How to Whistle,” I subvert the asterisk.  I remember asking ‘how can I use the asterisk for myself?’ How can I mouth it, embody it. How can it embody my trans identity and how I came out to my mom. I try to do this by showing the reader a different way the grammatical symbol can be read, heard, and understood. The symbol for me is a history of silence, and connected with me by containing the history of my queer & trans identity. Instead of silencing it, I wanted to sing it out loud. Then I thought about how the asterisk looked like lips whistling, of how the sound of whistling looks out in the air. It brought so many stories and layers of my history of coming out and to no longer silence the self anymore. 

 

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