Tortillera

Tortillera is the debut poetry collection of Caridad Moro-Gronlier. The title word means lesbian in Spanish. It is known across Spanish-speaking cultures but carries particular weight in Cuban experience, where in many Cuban-American households being called a tortillera, whether or not it is true, is among the worst insults. Many first-generation Cuban-American girls who loved other girls have suffered, denied and grieved over the word. Moro-Gronlier claims it for herself and uses it to tell her truth in frank, unflinching poems about coming out as queer and Cuban.

The first half of the book places the reader inside the speaker's Cuban-American life, lived on the hyphen, through vivid first-person narratives. The moments include marginalization at a parent-teacher conference, the class distinctions on display at different quinceañeras, and a walk down the aisle toward divorce amid wedding registries and Phen-Phen weight loss. They also include postpartum depression, a visit to a no-tell motel during an affair with her first female lover, and the contrast between the pain of divorce and the rush of sex and desire. Together they trace an identity taking shape in verse.

The poems work as reckoning, renewal, redemption and rebirth. They also examine larger questions: the role of language in gender and the roles that follow from it, the painful consequences of compulsory heterosexuality, and the patriarchal imprint on the Cuban diaspora. Tortillera won the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida.