From belly button to umbilical cord to roots, Naomi Ortiz traces the relationships between body and place in her work. In the opening ofSustaining Spirit, Ortiz asks: “¿y donde esta tu ombligo? Where are you centered or rooted?
In Kathi Wolfe’s introduction to We Are Not Your Metaphor: a disability poetry anthology, she writes about the long literary tradition of using disability as a metaphor for all things bad: “How often have you read poems that use blindness as a metaphor for spiritual ignorance, unthinking faith, or moral failings? Or deafness used as a metaphor for isolation, aloneness — a failure to emotionally communicate? Think: world of darkness. Deaf ears.
Pace and place: disability politics at desert speeds
An interview with Naomi Ortiz
From belly button to umbilical cord to roots, Naomi Ortiz traces the relationships between body and place in her work. In the opening of Sustaining Spirit, Ortiz asks: “¿y donde esta tu ombligo? Where are you centered or rooted?