An Enticing Conversation with Margaret Randall
Photo Credit: Barbara Byers
Poet, feminist, photographer, oral historian, and social activist Margaret Randall was born in New York City and grew up in New Mexico. Returning to New York in the 1950s, she was associated with the abstract expressionists and the Beats. She moved to Mexico City in the 1960s, where she cofounded and coedited the bilingual literary journal El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn. Randall took an active part in the Mexican student movement of 1968 and was forced to flee the country, traveling first to Prague and then to Cuba, where she lived for 11 years with her partner and four children. Randall wrote about those experiences in her memoir To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (2009).
Many of her books are attempts to understand how socialist revolutionary societies intersect, or fail to intersect, with feminism: Cuban Women Now: Interview with Cuban Women (1974), Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (1981), Sandino’s Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua (1994), and Gathering Rage: The Failure of 20th Century Revolutions to Develop a Feminist Agenda (1992). She is the author of more than 200 books of poetry, prose, oral testimony, and memoir, including, recently, Che on My Mind (2014), a feminist reflection on the life and legacy of Che Guevara; More Than Things (2014), a collection of personal essays; and Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression (2015). Randall’s recent collections of poetry include Ruins (2011), The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones (2013), and About Little Charlie Lindbergh (2014). She also edited the anthology Only the Road/Solo El Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry (2016).
1984 Randall returned to the United States, only to face deportation under the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952; her writings were declared “against the good order and happiness of the United States.” After a five-year legal battle, Randall won her case. She received a Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett grant for writers victimized by political repression and a PEN New Mexico Dorothy Doyle Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing and Human Rights Activism. Randall herself is the subject of a documentary by Lu Lippold and Pam Colby, The Unapologetic Life of Margaret Randall.
She has been a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and also taught briefly at the University of New Mexico, Macalester College, and the University of Delaware. Her best-known books are Cuban Women Now, Sandino’s Daughters, Sandino’s Daughters Revisited, and When I Look into the Mirror and See You: Women, Terror, and Resistance (all oral history with essay).
Recent books include Che On My Mind (essay), The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones (poetry), Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression (essays), To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (memoir, with photos), Narrative of Power and First Laugh (essay), and Stones Witness, Their Backs to the Sea, My Town, Something's Wrong with the Cornfields, and Ruins (poems, with photos), and As If the Empty Chair / Como si la silla vacía (poems in tribute to the disappeared of Latin America, in bilingual edition, translations by Leandro Katz and Diego Guerra). Time’s Language: Selected Poems 1959-2018 was published by Wing’s Press in 2018. In 2020 Duke University Press published her memoir, I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary.
Two of Randall’s photographs are in the Capitol Collection at the Round House in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2017 she was awarded a medal for Literary Achievement by the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. In 2019 she was awarded "The Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize"by Poesia en Paralelo Zero" in Quito, Ecuador, and Casa de las Américas in Cuba gave her its prestigious Haydée Santamaría medal. That same year the University of New Mexico awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters. In 2020 she won AWP’s George Garrett Prize and Chapman University’s Paulo Freire distinction.
I had the pleasure and honor of asking Margaret about how she interweaves the title of poet, feminist, photographer, oral historian, and social activist, how important is oral history and its technique, and so much more.
UZOMAH: What does artistic freedom mean to you?
MARGARET: As someone who was ordered deported from the United States, the country of my birth, because of opinions expressed in several of my books, I have thought a good deal about artistic freedom. Freedom in general is important, and artistic freedom is particularly important because it means the freedom of ideas, the imagination, and sometimes even alternative views of reality. At the same time, repressive measures have sometimes been enacted in the name of artistic freedom. In other words, as in other areas, a skewed interpretation of freedom of expression can be used to curtail rather than extend freedom. Of course, there are struggles for artistic freedom that are entirely straightforward. For example, the current struggles against censorship, where an alarming number of state school systems are removing books from the classroom because their contents are deemed “inappropriate” by right-wing administrators. Such censors are often motivated by fundamentalist religious concerns. In conclusion, I would say that artistic freedom is always something we should support, although there may be individual cases that warrant taking a closer look at what’s at stake.
U: How do you interweave the title of poet, feminist, photographer, oral historian, and social activist?
M: I don’t consciously interweave these different areas of my creative expression, but since I am a poet, a photographer, an oral historian, and a social activist, and since feminism deeply informs my life and work, I would say that all these parts of my identity come together naturally in what I make and do. Sometimes one genre is at the forefront, sometimes another—or more than one. To be more specific, I believe that my years of doing oral history have helped me pay attention to people’s voices, and this consciousness often shows itself in my poetry. My social activism naturally draws me to the major problems of our time, and this too can be seen in my art. I no longer make photographs, but when I did, I often used my own images in my books. And my feminism, again, informs all that I do.
U: What advice would you give to a young feminist that wants to use the literary and visual arts to communicate their political, social, and cultural message?
M: I would say: go for it. But I would say this to any creative person, young or old, feminist or not. I must tell you, however, that I’m not in the business of giving advice, and do so only if I’m seriously asked to.
U: You have lived in many places, including several Latin American countries; what did you learn from living in a revolutionary society? What were some of the benefits and any problems?
M: The two revolutionary societies I’ve lived in are Cuba, during the second decade of its revolution, and Nicaragua during the first four years of Sandinism. In both places, I learned an enormous amount, mostly about what it means to attempt to construct a truly egalitarian life for people. Access to universal healthcare, decent housing, free education, a fair justice system, and experiments aimed at improving life for all members of society was important as I raised four children and watched them go through school and become self-sufficient adults. In Cuba, there were shortages, and food and clothing rationing was pretty severe in the years we were there. But I can’t remember ever feeling this was a problem. Rather, it felt good to know that what was needed was spread among everyone. Sadly, revolutionary processes, like all civic experiments, are made by human beings, some notably more interested than others in true equality. So, I also learned how easy it is for problems to arise and for revolutionary ideas to be sidelined.
U: How has feminism impacted political ideas?
M: Feminism itself is a political idea. It enables a gender analysis of society and thus addresses issues of power and empowerment which are vitally important when we’re talking about real equality—not just for women but for all members of a society.
U: As an oral historian, how can preservers of culture and the history of its member better record what it is like to be a particular group of persons?
M: Oral history gives voice to the protagonists of social events. Their stories aren’t told by conventional historians who may have no real idea of what happened, but by those involved. Of course, the oral historian can filter such stories through their own often biased lenses, so care must be taken to prevent this. Good oral history, though, has been immensely useful in describing events from the viewpoint of those who lived them.
U: How important is oral history and its technique?
M: Very important, which is why it has been encouraged in countries engaged in social change.
U: After moving to Mexico City in the 60s, you cofounded and coedited the bilingual literary journal El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn. You also actively participated in the Mexican student movement in 1968 and were forced to flee the country. How much did your exile have to do with possible censorship of both the magazine and the use of the government to silence its citizens who have a difference of opinion?
M: My exile had everything to do with censorship. Although it was an independent literary magazine, El Corno Emplumado had put down deep roots and become quite influential among poets, artists, and the general reading public—not only in North and South America but elsewhere in the world as well. In almost eight years, we published more than 700 writers and artists from 35 countries. And the journal clearly stood with the Student Movement. Beyond the printed page, I myself also took part in the Movement. The Mexican government wanted to silence opposition, but there is also some evidence that the repression against me came from the US government, which had enormous influence in Mexico at the time.
U: You have had a long and storied career in the arts and activism. Is there anything you still need to do that you want to pursue, and if so, why?
M: Of course, there is much that I still need and want to do. At 86, one doesn’t know how much more time one has, but if nothing else, I want to continue to create because I believe my work has gotten better over time: deeper, more complex, more fearless.
U: When did you decide to explore your artistic statement further through photography?
M: In 1978, I was living in Cuba, writing for several Cuban cultural outlets. I was eager to make my own images to accompany my texts, and so I apprenticed to Ramón Martínez Grandal, a great Cuban photographer. I’ve always felt fortunate that he took me on. He was a marvelous teacher. My desire to learn photography may also have been motivated by the fact that I write in English and felt the need for an expressive language that I could share with my Latin American community, one that didn’t require a knowledge of my mother tongue. The following year, the Sandinistas were victorious in Nicaragua, and my old friend Ernesto Cardenal was named that country’s first Minister of Culture. He invited me there to interview women who had participated in the struggle. That was when I first used my newly acquired photographer’s skills in my books, and I did so often after that. I continued to develop as a photographer after moving to Nicaragua at the end of 1980. And back in the United States, after 1984, I was able to explore the genre further. It was with great sadness that some twenty years ago I had to stop working in the darkroom because of respiratory issues. I did work digitally for a while, but my favorite place as a photographer was always in the creative isolation of that dimly lit womb.
U: What book of poetry would you give of yours to someone new to your work and why?
M: If I had to recommend one of my books, I think it would be my memoir, I Never Left Home. It offers the best sense of what I’ve been about and includes poems and images as well as text.
U: Can you discuss the origins of your latest two poetry collections Storm Clouds Like Unkept Promises and Vertigo of Risk, and why now was the time to publish them?
M: There are important differences between these two collections, both stylistically and in terms of content. Both, however, address issues of great importance to me right now. For that reason, as each collection of poems became a book, I felt it imperative to get them out there. Zach Hively, my wonderful editor at Casa Urraca Press here in northern New Mexico, agreed. It is because of the encouragement, curation, and care of editors like Zach that my work has always found an audience. I have been very fortunate over the years to be able to work with brilliant editors of small presses who value poetry even when it is generally undervalued in our country.
U: What are some poetic aspects of activism and feminism?
M: Activism and feminism both draw on the imagination, requiring taking risks and thinking outside the box. This is the very definition of poetry.
Please visit her site for more information about Margaret’s writing, art, and activism.
