A talk with fabian romero
Qué Pasa, OSU Features Editor 23′-24′
By Adrielys Calderon Ortiz M.A. Student, Comparative Studies
fabian romero, a P’uerhepécha poet-scholar and Latinx faculty in Comparative Studies.
fabian romero is a newly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at OSU. As a P’uerhepécha poet-scholar, their interests are indigenous feminism, Mexican indigeneity, Indigenous Mexican migrancy, anti-colonial gender and sexuality. fabian’s work explores, as found in their biography, contemporary mestizo P’uerhépecha heritage family structures in Michoacan and the diaspora, as well as the manifestations of colonial heteropatriarchy. They aim to address an anti-colonial liberation through P’uerhépecha queer cultural practices.
In our conversation, fabian shared a love for poetry, scholarship, and community building. Thus, this interview created a space to converse about the past in Latinx communities and their present, in addition to the future we are all working to create for younger generations.
Adrielys Calderon Ortiz: To start our conversation, what inspired you to pursue your current academic career? What about your research interests?
fabian romero: I didn’t pursue college right away. I started my undergrad at 24 years old, and before that, I was part of activist communities, immigrants’ rights organizations, and was active in LGBTQA+ activism. It was the folks I met in these places that encouraged me to go to college. They said I was having the same conversations with them that were happening in the classroom. I took the opportunity. Regarding my research interests, I always loved poetry and thought about creative writing, but I thought that to write good poetry, I had to engage with theory, history, and context. I saw poetry as a possibility, and it became a goal to pursue academia when I saw the economic instability in only doing poetry or writing.
“Poetry gives everyday people the tools to talk about their lives. It’s very political, it has the power to move people into action, to feel.”
Thus, my research interests revolve around my pueblo, people, and experiences that I had seen and are misunderstood; being queer and a migrant. I’m interested in research that has a social impact.
ACO: How is community building important for you as you begin your time at OSU? And, given the workload on POC, how do we go about preventing burnout even as we aim to support our Latinx communities?
fr: I came to OSU because I felt there was a community I could be part of and the new Latinx faculty cohort that was coming in, too. It is incredibly important for me. I think in preventing burnout by having a community, that’s why it is important if you have a place you can go and laugh about the hard stuff. It makes it better when it’s hard.
To prevent burnout, I don’t make academia the center of my identity and try to have a big life outside of it. I have activities that have nothing to do with academia, that are not obligations but joys. For example, I have a dog and love spending time with him. Having a life outside academia helps to create a balance where my life is not taken over. I’m more than this.
ACO: As our final question, how do you go about co-creating our futures at a place like OSU?
fr: I believe it means building relationships with all Latinx folks, staff, not-tenured faculty, and people that work at the university. Often, we might be the people Latinx students come to, in a way, OSU is doing that to some extent by aiming to bring in more Latinx students to the department. I hope we can create a community and invite future Latinx students.
ACO: Would you like to share some final words of encouragement with readers?