DIÒJUÀ (or Mai travels through Nepantla…and not back) was my undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University. This project was a joint collaboration between the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and the Program in Creative Writing.
DIÓJUÀ is a collection inspired by the imaginary of in-betweenness, by the prison and liberation of borders, and by the (re)transformations we allow ourselves to undergo when examining them. It draws most inspiration from the theoretical framework of Nepantla; a word of Nahuatl origin that has been reclaimed by certain Chicane communities to describe the liminal states of existence that one can experience when living between/within/beyond borders, specifically under the context of empire and displacement.
I sought to create a text that interrogated the alien nature of the diasporic and historically displaced body, about our lack of reconciled history as well as our need for it. And because language is the medium for telling this story, it is also about language in the way it does and does not have the power to construct realities. Most of this collection is written in English. Some Spanish finds its way into the text as well. There will even be the occasional stray Chinese character, as if it happened to slip through another dimension and call this work home. All of these linguistic textures are meant to be taken as both fact and fiction; just as much surprising as they were anticipated.
The central “character” of this work is named Mai. DIÓJUÀ follows her genealogy as much as it wonders about her blood and heritage. It finds solace & suffering in the familial; it listens to and distrusts elder figures. This is the epic of Mai’s journey as a world is created around her just as she consequently creates the world that she inhabits; there are animals that speak just as there are those that stay silent. Throughout the four cycles that make up this thesis, Mai’s body cycles from ancestor to god, traveler to child. These are four embodiments of what I consider the stages of storytelling; to represent how one person can be both divine and mundane, how age transforms even the most weathered stone, and how we ourselves might recreate boundaries of our own ancient heritage. Mai is simultaneously a newborn and an Ancient, neither here nor there; and poetry is the landscape of unidentified borderless-ness where the only thing not questioned is her mere existence. Mai is not always alone in her journey. She is at times accompanied by a hovering elder figure named Tei, who is seen treating language as incantation; breaking and deconstructing certain words, as well as the multi-form World/Goddess figure, who is the metaphysical space and the otherworldly body which Mai traverses during her journey.
“gods” (the first cycle) deals with worldbuilding and the re-construction of the divine. “ancestors” (the second cycle) explores Mai’s (re)creation through different modalities and mediums, starting her own cyclical genealogy within her various reinventions and beginnings. “travelers” (the third cycle) deals in the feral and the foreign as components of movement and diaspora, including differing views of storytelling, and the in/ability of language to do justice. “children” (the last cycle) is a series of closing love letters towards Mai’s duality as a being both young and old, as a newborn who holds all knowledge & an ancient who continues unlearning what is taught & what is imposed.
Photos by Collin Riggins
noel yu-jen 