Poet Ángel García Reflects on Family History in New Collection

“Indifferent Cities,” the second book by García, who teaches English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has won the Helena Whitehill Award from Tupelo Press, which also published the manuscript.

García categorizes his work as “documentary poetics,” offering a unique perspective on time and history that elevates these elements alongside present experiences. The poems explore his ancestors' lives in Mexico, his parents’ migration to the United States, and their repeated journeys back across the border. He describes his parents as “notorious nonstorytellers,” noting their reluctance to discuss their childhoods or reasons for immigrating.

“They didn’t talk about their childhoods, their past, why they came to this country or why they were interested in going back so often,” García noted. He conveys a longing to learn more, as his family history is marked by silence: “I was contending with that longing and figuring out what I know, what I don’t know and trying to reconcile those things.”

García faced challenges while searching for official family records, as many documents were handwritten and poorly preserved, often containing errors or ambiguities. In some of his poems, he indicates unknown family names by using brackets to denote gaps in information.

He also explored personal artifacts such as letters and postcards, including a 1911 postcard from his great-grandfather, a poet. Although his mother claimed to have located his great-grandfather's grave that features a poem, García has had no success in confirming its existence.

“Ancestry is a language I’ve not learned to speak,” he reflects in one poem.

The collection details his grandparents' journeys through various regions in Mexico as well as his family's frequent moves between California and Texas. “Places I’ve Learned to Forget” chronicles the many schools he attended, while “Burials” depicts how he and his brother buried some of their belongings before relocating.

García emphasizes the complexities of migration, particularly for undocumented individuals, in how these experiences shaped personal identity and memory.

“In the country we’ve both longed for, and my mother has made into memory, she tells me this is where you belong,” he writes, expressing sentiments of belonging juxtaposed with feelings of dislocation.

The title “Indifferent Cities” is inspired by a line from Derek Walcott's poem “To the Hotel Saint Antoine.” For García, it captures the nostalgia surrounding childhood places and highlights the city's lack of memory, evolving in ways that disconnect from personal histories.

As he wrote, García began to recognize parallels between his own losses and those of family members, understanding that trauma often extends across generations.

He believes that even without complete information about one's ancestry, a coherent narrative can still emerge. “We try to create a mosaic of what exists,” he states, attesting to the necessity of imagination in reconstructing familial stories.

While the writing process proved challenging, it allowed García to connect more deeply with his heritage. He noted that his brother and nephews engaged with the collection, asking questions about their family’s past, which he views as a positive outcome.

“Silence was something I did not want to inherit,” he writes, hoping to pass down stories instead of gaps in knowledge to his future children.

In one poignant poem, García describes walking through Guadalajara, Mexico, with his young son, where his roots lie. Struggling to identify significant landmarks, he reflects on the fleeting nature of memory: “Soon, we will depart this place and never return: the first of many cities he will leave, just as the past has left us with the litanies of indifferent cities we will faintly remember as ours.”

Editor’s note: To contact Ángel García, email [email protected].