Thomas Rothe

Thomas Rothe is a translator and scholar of Caribbean and Latin American literatures. His research focuses on the history of translation, print and popular culture, and critical discourses. As a translator, he has brought into English the poetry of Jaime Huenún, Rodrigo Lira, Emma Villazón, and Julieta Marchant, among others. He has also co-translated into Spanish Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously and Claire of the Sea Light. He is currently an Associate Professor of Literature at the Universidad de Playa Ancha, in Valparaíso, Chile, and a Fondecyt postdoctoral fellow.

Caliban, and Roberto, on a Horse in La Víbora

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A few precise words drain simple truth into a palm basket and inhale rumors, the clearest passion for language.

Wayward Eyes

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My mother squinted her wayward eyes, exhaling a cloud of blood, when they rejected her from the Havana Normal School for Teachers, one day,

Girl Leaving Guinea

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I am eight years old. I was born in Guinea, like my parents. I fell asleep waiting for the plane and never saw them again. We were headed for New York, we weren’t going through Tierra Firme, we weren’t crossing the Darien Gap, we weren’t swimming through the Río Bravo.

For Julia de Burgos

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In Carolina before the housing developments when the river would drown people in a breeze and amanú was no extraordinary herb.

106th Street, NY

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From the country to a slum in Río Piedras to Comerío, Naranjito, San Juan, Cuba New York, Washington, New York and as a corpse back to Puerto Rico two months after collapsing

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