Yvonne Martinez
Yvonne Martinez is a retired labor negotiator/organizer. She has been published by ZyZZyVa, Crab Orchard Review, Labor Notes, and NPR. She also formerly wrote a local labor blog in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her forthcoming memoir in essays, Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman, covers her childhood in Salt Lake City/South Central/Boyle Heights and her work as a labor negotiator/organizer in California and the Pacific Northwest. Her play Scabmuggers is based on her experience as a National Fellow of the Harvard Trade Union Program in 1994. Yvonne lives in Berkeley, CA, and Portland, OR.
Are there particular films that have influence your writing?
Anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, not so much for writing process but for story content.
Is there a work of art that you love? Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
Eugene Delacroix. Love his complex works often painted as an act of defiance. I saw one at the Getty.
Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?
Matching salt shakers. I love the diversity of shapes and stories told in simple yet utilitarian objects. My mother collected them and I have for the longest time. I especially like to dumpster dive for them in thrift store bins of discarded dishware. Nothing like finding one in bin and the match unbroken in another. They are everywhere in my tiny space.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I knit and I am a salsa dancer. I dance regularly at a local non-profit community roots music venue. Recent live band from Havana was incredible.
What brings you great joy?
Witnessing people triumph over internal or external tyranny.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
Spanish is my first language, although I rarely speak it now, except with friends. Nothing like kindergarten in 1950’s Utah to knock speaking Spanish out of you. There is Spanish throughout my book “Someday Mija, You’ll Learn The Difference Between A Whore And A Working Woman. Spanish was the indirect language of intimacy and vulnerability. English was direct, blunt (rude by Mexican standards) forthright, transactional, White.
