• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Valley Citizen

Pursuing truth toward justice

The Valley Citizen

Pursuing truth toward justice
  • Arts
  • Education
  • Environment
  • History
  • Nature
  • Politics
  • Wit
  • About

Modesto Poet, Writer, & Activist Tina Curiel-Allen

May 24, 2020 By Tom Portwood 1 Comment

Tina Curiel-Allen
Tina Curiel-Allen

In sharp, powerful images from her poem “The Things I Stole,” the fine Xicana/Boricua poet, writer, and activist Tina Curiel-Allen recalls one of the most painful but transformative experiences of her life:

It wasn’t until jail that I found a place that could steal from me, /I found walls that ate time and tears like money, /And offered no form of recompense. /I felt the extent of my debt in those walls, lying on a metal cot, /reading desperate messages scraped into the bed above me./I realized I had taken more than I could ever give./All lost to that hole of insatiable need known to addicts/And thieves alike.

“I am a writer and a confessional poet, so I write about my life and experiences pretty explicitly,” Mrs. Curiel-Allen said recently.  “That’s the personal form of writing I share with the community. But I also use writing as a way to build community. I have co-edited or co-created a number of zines to bring representation, or counter-narratives, or different voices, to reflect the diversity in the Central Valley and the communities I come from, as a Xicana and Boricua.”

As, “The Things I Stole” and other writings detail, Mrs. Curiel-Allen’s life could have taken a much different path than the one that it has. But the long arc of her story reveals how courage and resiliency can heal even deep wounds when a caring community is nearby.

“I was born in the Bay Area and grew up in Ceres, which was a pretty small, conservative, agricultural town at the time,” she related. “I often felt like an observer or an outsider. I was a pretty weird kid and I started doing drugs when I was about twelve. When I think of the young child that I was, I feel some pain for that child. But as a kid, I didn’t know. Beginning in eighth grade I started getting in trouble at home – my parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they put me on independent studies. I never went to traditional high school, which I think shaped some of my learning styles and tendencies. I didn’t get the kind of socialization that comes from being in school. Then I was arrested for the first time when I was 18 years old.”

Mrs. Curiel-Allen has written about that first incarceration in a moving article she penned for Teen Vogue in 2017. “I think it’s important to lead with my life experiences, to have a purpose with my writing,” she noted.  ”My writing all hangs around representation, truth-telling, visibility,  building community, and using writing as a tool to do all that – which is what reading did that for me when I was younger. I feel it’s my obligation as a writer to do that now that I am an adult.”

Following several difficult years in her late teens and early twenties,

“I started going back to school in my mid-twenties, and last year got my degree from U.C. Davis. I’m 38 now, so it was a long road – ten, almost eleven years.  I hit all the non-traditional boxes, in a lot of different ways. What that gave me was a different type of appreciation for education. And it gave me an idea, once I started going back to school, of what I wanted education to do for me. And what I wanted from it was for me to be a credible voice of my experiences and my community. So I took school very seriously – I was there to learn.  It definitely shaped what I put into it, and what I got out of it.”

At U.C. Davis, Mrs. Curiel-Allen became a leader, co-founding Beyond the Stats, a group for formerly-incarcerated and system-impacted students. “That was a really powerful moment of realizing how much the experience of being incarcerated had shaped our lives,” she notes of that time.

While at the university, she also co-authored a syllabus and was one of the leaders of a class geared for writers of color. “We wanted to examine institutions and how they shaped us, and examine our role within them – to push for more visibility and truth-telling.”

For Mrs. Curiel-Allen, being actively engaged in the community isn’t just a choice she’s made – it’s a commitment and, one senses, a labor of love. She is currently working for Fathers and Families of San Joaquin, a non-profit agency focusing on social justice and human rights issues and programs. She is also part of a trio of Xicana women who have developed and published the zine exist(ir), which “documents the Latinx experience in the Central Valley. We are working on our fourth edition now, and planning to have a release party sometime this summer, though we may have to figure out a different way to hold the event. It honors all the Latinx in the Central Valley, from Sacramento to Bakersfield.”

exist(ir) coverIn the past, copies of exist(ir) were often sold at mercaditos. “Our intention with exist(ir) was always to be representative of our community, and to take space to make space for others. Mercaditos are a one way we did that. We would put the call out for local vendors while also keeping in mind other events we have attended locally or other Xicanx or Latinx owned vendors we might know of through social media. The mercaditos or mercados are markets where folks can bring their goods and share in commerce and community.”

In March, 2018, Mrs. Curiel-Allen was asked to write a second important article for Teen Vogue, titled “What Decolonization Is, and What It Means to Me.”

“Decolonization is a topic that is hard to talk about in a way that is accessible because the term is so loaded, she remarked. “I was so honored to write that piece, it was like a prayer, and I feel like you can see that when you read it. “I don’t know how unique I am with the experiences I’ve had,” reflected Mrs. Curiel-Allen. “Life often determines people’s access to resources or certain possibilities. Sometimes the way to make bridges is for the other person to ask. I really want to emphasize that I am a product of the people who helped me, loved me, supported me, and were mirrors for me when I needed it the most. I am also the product of different communities where I found help. I try to pay that forward in the work I do to build community. There are all sorts of different people in the Valley from different backgrounds and it just makes the community richer.”   

 

Filed Under: Arts

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Leah A Hassett says

    May 24, 2020 at 10:45 pm

    Thank you for this article. I’m impressed by Curiel-Allen’s self knowledge, and thankful that, as the reader, I can see it and learn from it. That insight, and her generous spirit, make her such an inspiring subject. I have heard her read before, and her writing is beautiful and moving.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Note: Some comments may be held for moderation.

Primary Sidebar

Off The Wire

In California?s Heartland, a New Resistance Movement Is Taking Root
In California’s Heartland, a New Resistance Movement Is Taking Root
How do you change a place as polluted and desperately unequal as the San Joaquin Valley?
www.nytimes.com
America?s Approach to Addiction Has Gone Off the Rails
America’s Approach to Addiction Has Gone Off the Rails
In a time of fentanyl and meth, we need to use law enforcement differently and more often.
www.theatlantic.com
Plastic Pollution Is So Pervasive That It?s Causing a New Disease in Seabirds
Plastic Pollution Is So Pervasive That It’s Causing a New Disease in Seabirds
Researchers coined the term “plasticosis” to describe stomach damage related to ingesting trash.
www.audubon.org
'Greedflation,' Conspiracy Theories, And Conspiracy
‘Greedflation,’ Conspiracy Theories, And Conspiracy
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM?s home for opinion and news…
talkingpointsmemo.com
White House plan to fight antisemitism takes on centuries of hatred in America
White House plan to fight antisemitism takes on centuries of hatred in America
Recommended steps include raising awareness of antisemitism now and in the past, expanding knowledge of Jewish heritage in the US
www.timesofisrael.com
Oath Keepers leader Rhodes sentenced to 18 years for Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
Oath Keepers leader Rhodes sentenced to 18 years for Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes faces a prison sentence up to 25 years in the first punishments for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
www.washingtonpost.com
Opinion | America?s Poverty Is Built by Design
Opinion | America’s Poverty Is Built by Design
How did the U.S. become a land of economic extremes with the rich getting richer while the working poor grind it out? Deliberately.
www.politico.com
Republican Jewish Coalition Blasts Gosar Over Staffer's Ties To White Supremacist: Fuentes Has 'No Place' In Congress
Republican Jewish Coalition Blasts Gosar Over Staffer’s Ties To White Supremacist: Fuentes Has ‘No Place’ In Congress
The Republican Jewish Coalition slammed Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) following a  TPM…
talkingpointsmemo.com
Newsom restores floodplain funds, adds $290 million to flood control budget
Newsom restores floodplain funds, adds $290 million to flood control budget
After widespread, bipartisan criticism, the governor revised his budget to include $40 million to restore San Joaquin Valley floodplains.
calmatters.org
New Study Finds a High Minimum Wages Creates Jobs
New Study Finds a High Minimum Wages Creates Jobs
Conventional wisdom had long suggested the opposite.
nymag.com
Spiraling in San Francisco?s Doom Loop
Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop
What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed.
www.curbed.com
San Diego to open homeless camp sites at two parking lots near Balboa Park
San Diego to open homeless camp sites at two parking lots near Balboa Park
The two lots could accommodate about 500 tents and would be an alternative to congregate shelters
www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Find us on Facebook

The Valley Citizen
PO Box 156
Downtown Bear Postal
1509 K Street
Modesto, CA 95354

Email us at:
thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Footer

The Valley Citizen
PO Box 156
Downtown Bear Postal
1509 K Street
Modesto, CA 95354

Email us at:
thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Subscribe for Free

* indicates required

Search

• Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 The Valley Citizen

Dedicated to the memory of John Michael Flint. Contact us at thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Editor and publisher: Eric Caine

Website customization and maintenance by Susan Henley Design