Wading Through Identity: Tracing lineage in Saúl Hernández’s poetry in How to Kill a Goat and Other Monsters

Writing about lineage means untangling, not only your experiences but the experiences of the generations before. It means finding where your identity begins, without letting the past be forgotten. This is a collection I will never forget and I am privileged to say I was able to interview Saúl Hernández for his debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters. Hernández had just led a craft talk for the Texas State MFA students, which I attended and found new ways to think about what I want to say with my writing. 

As queer surrealist writer from San Antonio, Saúl Hernández writes about his grief and loss which stems from the hardships experienced by his undocumented parents in this collection. There is pain, but also familial love and understanding that transcends any difficulty. Hernández brings us on this journey to understanding his identity with him, one that begins with water. 

VG: I wanted to start with asking about the first poem of the collection “In Another Life” which is outside the five sections, why did you decide for this poem specifically to be the opening poem?

SH: I think because this book is tracing lineage, I felt like it was important to establish early on to my readers what would have happened in this alternate world if my parents had never immigrated to the [United] States. So I think “In Another Life” capitulates both that glimpse into that type of world, but it also touches on my identity at the same time.  So, it is in a way playing with that as well, in terms of “This is what your future could have looked like”, you know, I could have been working the fields instead of writing poems and educating…and [could have] been married, just because my family is from a small town. Usually by the age of 17 or 18, you are wed to somebody. I think it’s just a great opening poem at establishing that this could have been my reality if they hadn’t risked coming to the [United] States. 

VG: I think about that often too, I’m in graduate school writing poetry and it’s really different from what my grandma and my mom were doing at my age. My grandma was working in the fields, it makes me feel very lucky. 

SH: Exactly that, just touching on that, we’re privileged enough to be here and actually be in a school setting when actually most of my family, and maybe yours hadn’t stepped foot into college. 

VG: Yeah, exactly and that’s one reason I like that you brought up identity because I know it was one of the main themes throughout this collection, and I felt like you had a very unique way of blending queerness and your identity as a Latinx. How do you go about writing the intertwining parts of your identity? 

SH: I think this has a lot to do with growing up not being out, because I was kind of balancing all these different types of persons within myself. This isn’t mentioned in the book, it’s a top-tier secret, but I grew up as a Jehovah ’s Witness. Growing up I did 19 years in that religion, my first 19 years, just balancing who I really was and my Latinx heritage plus my religious aspect. It was kind of a performance I did while growing up and in my early adulthood. It wasn’t till my early twenties that I stirred away from that. I think a lot of it has to do with the way I was already playing all these roles. It was easier to transcribe it when it came to paper, because of the way I had been navigating through my life. 

VG: Wow, that’s really interesting to think about. When I write about identity as well, I feel like sometimes I just focus on one part of my identity because it can feel muddy trying to connect feelings. That’s why, when reading your book, I was really impressed. 

SH: Yeah, and I also feel like queerness is a big thing that’s not accepted into a traditional first-generation household. It’s very tough to be like, “This is who I am,” and know that your parents’ views might just be very standard and traditional. There’s a sense of negotiating, but also pushing against that norm to create other types of norms within that heritage. 

VG: The book constantly refers to water, and I know it’s mentioned in the book that this is a reference to your father, but water isn’t just mentioned in the poems themselves, but the sections of the collection are titled, “Waves” and there are some poems that reference water, such as “The Rio Grande Speaks” and “Water Runs To”. These poems stood out to me a lot as someone who is from a border town who often writes about man-made borders and the river. Do you think you could share a little on why water played such an important part in the collection? 

SH: I actually didn’t know water was gonna be such a big part of this collection, but the more I drafted poems and wrote, the more I saw a return to water. That’s when I asked myself what I am really trying to write towards or what I am not writing about. Part of that was the history and the backstory because part of my dad’s history in that and how his brother drowned in the river, and I feel like that ended up being what I was writing to understand that kind of grief he was going through, but at the same time, understanding my own grief, and just general grief in general. It wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 that I went back and looked at my drafts and I saw how prevalent water was in every poem. That’s when I realized that was what I was trying to write towards, and I needed to see it through. That was the push I needed to keep writing about this in this collection, particularly and just see all the ways water can come out. 

I just shared with you all [in craft class] my aesthetics in poetry and a big one for me is image. Not just a standard image, but an image in terms of the five senses. So I kind of push myself to think about how many ways I can incorporate water here by using the five senses. So that’s what I did, and as far as the sections go, water has layers. There are oceans underneath, there’s currents, things like that, so that’s why I wanted to label these sections, “The First Wave”, “The Second Wave”, and it goes on. Just to mimic those layers of water and I hope I did it.

VG: I think you did, and also the cover reflects that with the waves. You had mentioned earlier during the craft talk that you write towards family heritage with this collection, and you brought up some really sensitive topics in this collection. How do you go about writing these sensitive topics about not only yourself and your past, but your families past with feeling like you might be overstepping. 

SH: I think at first, for me, I didn’t want to write this because I thought it might be too personal. There was also the thought about what if someone in my family reads it and asks why am I writing this, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it needed to be said. Specifically because now that the book is out and I have done a couple of campus visits and panels, now I know that other people are being seen and that they have similar stories that align with mine. To me, that gives me a sense of being seen in a way I didn’t think I would be seen. It also makes my readers feel seen, especially those who relate to this type of work. To me that is the most rewarding part of it all, if I am able to risk and write towards these things and issues, imagine how it would be if we were all writing so authentically, how much more connection would we have all together. So I think for me that is the biggest take away. 

VG: That’s beautiful and as a reader I definitely felt seen. Your way of storytelling in this collection really shines through the language and form, it amazes me how you use up the page. You don’t stick to one side of the page, it’s very bold. Do you have any stories in mind that you knew you wanted to tell with this collection, things you felt like you needed to say?

SH: One of the main stories we can see throughout the whole collection is not only my mom’s and dad’s journey through grief, but kind of my own journey, and like what generational trauma passes onto those who haven’t dealt with it. I think there is a study that even our genes mimic that type of trauma our parents passed down. So for me it was just important to tell my own story with my queerness and coming out, but also specifically because I feel like even though this book is composed of so much grief, there is a sense of fighting against grief. It was so much revelation, and at the same time, it is a story of not only all the bad things that happened in my family, but it is also like this happened and we are still here. We are still pushing and we are still gonna be here. We are still gonna be writing towards everything else that wasn’t said here in this collection. I feel proud of the things I’ve written and I hope it does inspire others to write their most authentic stories, because it is necessary. 

VG: You should be very proud and I agree with you because I know I was very inspired after reading this collection. I had just submitted my own poem about the Rio Grande River for a workshop. I wish I had read your collection while writing my poem, so I could have gotten some ideas, but your poems on the Rio Grande were very important to me. Which brings me to my last question: the title of the book and the last poem of the collection are both “How to Kill a Goat and other Monsters”. How did you decide on that? Which one came first, the title or the poem?

SH: Actually, part of these poems, about 12 or 15 of them, were in my chapbook. I had a chapbook come out first. I entered a contest, it’s from the Two Sylvia’s Press chapbook contest and the only reason why I entered it was because my mother of poetry Victoria Chang was judging it. She was selecting the winner and I said, you know what, I’m going to do it. 

So, I entered and won, and then I was in disbelief, not even about the contest I had won, more so that Victoria Chang had read my work. I couldn’t believe she had read it, but anyways where I was going with this, is that initially the title for this collection was gonna be “At Night my Body Waits”, but because I won the chapbook contest, that was already the title for the chapbook. So with this collection, I had already used that title, so I think about what else this collection is doing. So I had to go back and reread everything and then at the end, it seemed very fitting to title it “How to Kill a Goat and other Monsters” because we do learn how to kill a goat with the last poem, but we’re also fighting all these monsters throughout this collection. There are metaphorical monsters, others are real monsters, so I just felt like that was the fitting title for it and I am really proud of that title. Compared to “At Night My Body Waits”, I feel like if I had titled it that for this collection, it wouldn’t have encapsulated everything. 

So the title kind of came first, and then when it came to putting the book together, I felt it would be fitting to have “How to Kill a Goat and other Monsters,” which is one of the poems as the last poem. Specifically because that poem ends on the word “beauty” and I didn’t want my reader to leave this collection without finding elements of beauty. 

VG: Wow, I had that question in my mind after finishing the book because it felt different in terms of tone, compared to the rest. It felt much more hopeful and something that keeps going.

SH: Yeah, I think it’s definitely one of those poems. The poem itself talks about other experiences, but also taking agency. The “I” in the poem decides at the end not to do what everyone else in their family has done before them. In terms of the act of killing the goat. So, by the speaker in the poem and this lyrical “I” takes agency and decides you know what, I am not going to kill the goat, I am going to let it go. I think that act just encapsulated how I feel. I am taking my own agency back too.