Yaguareté White: Poems

by Diego Báez

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Baéz grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Baéz revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

Notably, this raucous collection also wrestles with Guaraní, a state-recognized Indigenous language widely spoken in Paraguay. Guaraní both structures and punctures the book, surfacing in a sequence of jokes that double as poems, and introducing but leaving unresolved ambient questions about local histories of militarism, masculine bravado, and the outlook of the campos. Cutting across borders of every kind, Baéz’s poems attempt to reconcile the incomplete, contradictory, and inconsistent experiences of a speaking self that resides between languages, nations, and generations.

Yaguareté White is a lyrical exploration of Paraguayan American identity and what it means to see through a colored whiteness in all of its tangled contradictions.
 

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[Nisha]

So glad I was introduced to Diego’s work! Read this collection earlier this year but wanted to re read for the Sealey Challenge.

[Geoff Martin]

Read this manuscript in advance—well worth preordering. Releases Feb. 2024. Excellent poetry collection that explore Latinx identity in the US and deep family and cultural ties to Paraguay. The form of the poems is highly varied: some shaped as paragraph, almost prose poetry, others structured by snappy dialogue. All of it inventive in its language plays as Báez explores the difficulties and paradoxes of learning his father's language, Guaraní.

[Jennifer]

I picked this up at the library looking for collections of poetry for my Latinx authors challenge, and because the cover was so fantastic. I ended up delighted to have found it.

This is a collection of displacement. Displacement of country and of language. The author’s family is from Paraguay, and while it seems that he makes frequent visits and spends time with extended family, the more typical sorts of immigrant struggles with heritage and identity are compounded by being from a country few people in America know anything about. He did not grow up speaking Spanish, let alone Guaraní, a language which, while indigenous, was also shaped by colonialism (and Jesuits, directly).
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These poems are a conversation between Báez and Paraguay, between Paraguay and the world, between Báez and the world’s perception of Paraguay (but especially the perception of privileged white Americans.) There is a series of poems entitled “Postcard from Your Semester Abroad, Volunteer Trip, and Mission Visit” that highlights the tension of outsiders attempting to represent Paraguay.

Of course this collection highlighted for me just how little I knew about Paraguay. Something I need to work on!

[Wendy]

fantastic.

[Cecilia]

Stunning and at times comical. What an electric reader too

[Evan]

Good to start the year with a Chicago poet (and IWU alum).

[Patricia N. McLaughlin]

In this debut collection, the poet explores his Paraguayan heritage. Some poems seem like they are still searching for what that means (“Postcards”). Others illuminate like searchlights (“Sporting History,” “Inheritance”). A couple stab like the dagger of a skilled assassin (“Patronym,” “Antonym”).

“Everyone knows a man’s father
is the first dictator
he must suffer. Every stayed hand
a vow to new beginnings,

a pledge with all the promise
of a strongman turned soft,
one who nevertheless lets fly
the undulating Janus of that two-faced flag.” 🇵🇾
—from “Patronym,” p. 19


Favorite Poems:
“Yaguarete White”
“Patronym”
“Antonym”
“Sporting History”
“Inheritance”
“Grace Baptist”
“Portrait of the Artist with Clubfoot”

[Sam]

Day 3 of Sealey Challenge, book 17 from AWP.

The history aspect can’t be ignored (since so few of us are deep into Paraguayan history), so I felt very informed. Conveys really well being between two cultures, the shifting sands of privilege, the difficulties of languages across generations, and to top it off there are some beautiful pieces about children and spouses. Now I want to read more Paraguayan writers—tragically (to Báez), it will most likely be an attempt at reading Yo, el Supremo. Wish me luck.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel]

This is simply a fantastic collection. Smart/stinging. The tone was *chef’s kiss* great images. All of the above!

[Vincent Antonio Rendoni]

Early contender for favorite book of 2024. All but certain to be a cornerstone of Latin-American Poetry in the 21st Century. Half-brown kid in me felt SEEN. Also, uh, that cover art. 🔥🔥🔥

[Marc]

Gave up. Just having trouble connecting with these poems. To be fair, I seem to be having trouble connecting lately with poetry. Picked this up at the library because the cover caught my eye.

[N]

A heartfelt poetry collection about the struggle of reconciling family ties, especially if you don't fit in culturally. The poems are about wrestling with the ideas of whiteness and racism; of brown men getting themselves into mischief and scolding from their parents. Spare, and what a hell of a quick read- this is a gorgeous collection to savior.

Such standouts are “Patronym”- a poem critical of patriarchal hierarchies, and a coming of age poem, “everyone knows a man’s father is the first dictator he must stuffer”(19). Variations of language are seen in “Chestnut People”. And the haunting “American Marine” is about wrestling with the idealism of being in the American armed forces- both a mixture of pride and ambivalence.

[Chelsey Hillyer]

What a beautiful read. These poems not only held me as a reader, but also held up a mirror. Gorgeous language and a gentle spirit make this collection an experience to savor.

[Megan McCarthy-Biank]

Readers will learn much about Báez’s unique experiences that many mixed children living in America endure. He stood out like a sore thumb both in his neighborhood and in his visits to his father’s homeland. And through his many pieces in the collection, we see the isolation and self-reflection that results from it.

Read the entire book review on the Cantina Book Club website: https://cantinabookclub.com/review/ya...