We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Noel Quiñones. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Noel below.
Noel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
Every year I am asked what first inspired me to write, and every year the answer moves farther and farther away from writing itself. My parents believed deeply in education, as it was the trajectory that allowed them to move up the economic ladder, having grown up in poverty in the Bronx and Harlem in the 1970s. Yet, this story is familiar to many in its traditional approach. My grandparents were all migrants from Puerto Rico, they wanted a better life for their children and so my parents wanted the same. They enrolled me in Catholic school, demanded straight A’s, and believed arbitrary test scores told you everything you needed to know. But that isn’t what impacted my life and career as a writer.
My mother was a 2nd grade teacher and when we were not at school, we were still learning. The joke is no New Yorker has ever been to the. Empire State Building, yet my mother and I had visited almost every tourist land mark in the city before I was 12 years old. My mother believed in the immersive nature of learning, how it should feel exciting, adventurous, and interactive. We learned how trains were built at the Transit Museum, embraced the immigrant narrative of our city at Ellis Island, and experienced traditional Puerto Rican plays at Teatro SEA. At the same time, my father got me a passport when I was a middle schooler and we traveled to Italy, Canada, and the Dominican Republic. I was exposed to new languages, new foods, new architecture and new ways of seeing the world.
In this way, New York City was one of many classrooms in my young life where the opportunity to learn wasn’t confined to a single space but expansive in approach. My parents taught me to be curious, to ask questions, to use my hands and my mind. I like to say I was a creative before I ever wrote a poem. Writing necessitates a hunger for humanity, to observe, to interview, to engage with the world. My parents gave me what they never had growing up, a doorway to experiences beyond their respective neighborhoods. Writing is simply a byproduct of the lifestyle my parents gifted me and for that I am eternally grateful.
Noel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a Bronx born and raised Puerto Rican writer, performer, and educator. I name those three in tandem because they are inseparable to me. I am an Emmy award winning performer, hold an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi, and am currently teaching English Literature at San Francisco University High School in the Bay Area. I have performed, spoken, and hosted writing and identity workshops at over 100 colleges, K-12 schools, organizations, and non-profits across the country, focusing on the complexity of identity, the necessity of service learning & civic engagement, and the interconnectedness of relationships of all kinds. The history of Latinidad is a crucial example of the possibilities and hurdles of identity formation in our country. Yet, only by being “in the midst of the muck,” as Cornel West tell us, can we understand what it means to be human, in all its complex beauty and struggle. Having founded and run Project X, a Bronx based arts organization in my borough, I understand the power of art making to make sense of our lived experiences as well as the necessity of building community through friendship, love, and collaboration. My unique expertise stems from being a working artist, a trained educator, and a community organizer. I research and engage with the psychology of identity, translate and infuse this engagement into my own writing and workshops, then consult and build programming with various communities so that they too can lead more true, collaborative, and holistic lives. In this way, I am offering people the opportunity to become closer to themselves through writing, in an effort to become closer to others through community action, all in an effort to build long-lasting relationships that benefit us all.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
For a long time I believed that community building was the byproduct of being a writer. Yet, it is the other way around. Fifteen years into being a writer, I look back at all the connections I made in the East Coast Slam Poetry community, all the friendships I kept across the schools I taught at and visited, and all the people I never talked to but somehow meet again in a different city or conference or workshop. Slam poetry, as a doorway into writing, showed me the fruitfulness of relationship building. Too often people view writers as individuals grinding away in a corner of their room on a typewriter, alone and deeply dedicated. We celebrate this societally, rewarding writers for isolating themselves so they could finish their book in record time, even if this means they shun their family, friends, even partners. This individualistic, hustle approach to writing deeply disturbs me and was antithetic to my experience in the slam poetry community. Unfinished drafts were often shared between poets, new work was celebrated publicly, and collaboration was encouraged and at times even mandated. In these ways, writing was a communal experience and was grounded in relationships.
My first book of poems, which is currently being sent out to publishers, is about my childhood in The Bronx, the family and friends and partners who shaped my experience of adolescence, New York City, and identity. I write collaboratively with my communities, interviewing family members, discussing drafts with past partners, and sharing fresh work in open mics. While it was writing that led me to seeing the importance of community building, community building is now more central to my life than writing. As a Puerto Rican whose family is vast and emphasizes showing up for each other, as a polyamorous person who navigates love through open communication and accountability, and someone with 13 best friends spread out across the country, my mission as a writer is to document a lifestyle that emphasizes people.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Some writers write every day, some write only during fellowships or retreats to the woods or the beach, others only write during the summer. I am a slow writer who believes in living a life that offers me experiences to write about. Yet, growing up in New York City and being tempted into the hustle approach to writing as fast as possible to publish as fast as possible to sell as many books as possible to then do it all over again shaded my early relationship to writing. If I wasn’t constantly producing new work, getting published, or getting paid for gigs then I wasn’t really a writer. It took me many years to unlearn this approach and to feel comfortable during my low levels of production.
I did not unlearn this myself. It was the voices of the people I loved who continued to chip away at this toxic approach to the art I loved. They showed me that I am a person first, not a machine that must produce in order to exist. And if I am to say that about my writing then I had to learn to say that about how I lived my life as well. I have come to accept that being a writer is not my identity, rather being a writer is one of many identities I have. I am a writer, teacher, salsa dancer, comic book reader, bike rider, Latine scholar, world traveler, movie buff, couch potato, and FunkoPop collector. I asked myself what makes me happiest and found that the answer is the people I love. So now, I say yes to the people I love, whether its a cousin calling to catch up, or a friend asking to go rock climbing, or a partner saying let’s go on a weekend vacation. Even when I am busy working on lesson plans, or in the middle of writing a poem, or practicing for a show. In this way, I accept that my writing will come when it comes and that my art is a documentation of a life well lived and not the other way around.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.noelpquinones.com
- Instagram: @noelpquinones
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelpquinones/
Image Credits
Jeremy Rios Nicholas Nichols Achieving the Dream Conference St. Albans School Academy of Young Writers Lyons Township High School Castilleja School NY Pops Up Festival Longleaf Writers Conference