Erika Ayón emigrated from Mexico when she was five years old and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. She graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in English. She is a former PEN Emerging Voices Fellow. She has taught poetry to middle and high school students across Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, Dryland, Chiricú Journal, Wide Awake Anthology, Coiled Serpent Anthology, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection Orange Lady received Honorable Mention for Poetry at the 2019 International Latino Book Awards.
“Poignant stories told with a clear, beautiful voice. Erika offers such an important perspective. Especially at this time.”
Ruth Forman, Author of Prayers Like Shoes.
“I am astonished by the heartbreaking beauty of “Orange Lady,” Erika Ayón’s debut collection. Here is a poetry of survival and betrayal, love and longing on the gritty streets of Los Angeles. San Pedro and 23rd, Numero Uno Market, Freemont High School are a few of the settings in which her real-life drama unfolds with cinematic clarity, as in the final stanza of “Each Fall,” where her father returns with stories from four months working the fields: ‘How the strawberries bleed onto your cut,/blistered hands. How people are plucked/from trees by the immigrant police. How rows/of men lie down to rest at night with love letters,/photographs planted above their chests.’ Erika Ayón is a poet to be reckoned with.”
Donna Hilbert, Author of Gravity: New and Selected Poems.
“Erika Ayón’s debut collection of poetry Orange Lady is an immigrant testimony of survival and resilience, of what it means to be in South Central LA, between San Pedro and 23rd Street. These poems record a plea for peace, for a father’s and a mother’s rest, an autobiographical narrative, where each poem stitched to each other forms a litany of street vendors, cholos, and the reconstruction of a Mexican family. The orange, sometimes the object of consolation, sometimes struggle, becomes “the only thing that could compete with the sun,” and begins the powerful journey of what it’s like to fall in love with poems. The important voice in the Orange Lady asks for permission to write, to put thoughts into words, the need to recover everything once dear, now lost.
William Archila, Author of The Art of Exile, winner of the International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize.
Orange Lady is a poetry collection that recounts the author’s experience as an immigrant growing up in South Central Los Angeles, where her family sold oranges on the street in order to survive. In adulthood, Ms. Ayón explores different facets of grief from not belonging in certain spaces, longing for a country she left long ago, and the loss of her father. The title itself stems from a moment when she was young, and a classmate called her, “Orange Lady” in front of the whole school after seeing her selling oranges. Although that moment initially caused her immense shame, it later motivated her to become more than her circumstances. These poems depict a journey that begins with recollections of being a street vendor to fading memories of Mexico and South Central Los Angeles, to reflections about a daughter’s relationship with her father. They delve into issues of poverty, cultural identity, and the many hardships faced by the immigrant community.
Orange Lady
When We Cross
I sometimes wonder what became
of the belongings we left behind.
Did the landlord come and spill
them on the curb like confetti?
Did the townspeople gather
at the sidewalk like scavengers
at a gravesite?
I wonder if someone ended up
with my red and white checkered
school uniform. My blue plastic
coin purse. The wood dining table
with the blood stain on the corner
from the time I split my lip on
its sharp edge, had to get ten stitches.
Or is there, at the center of every
town, a pile where abandoned things
are taken? Where people can drop
off the remains of those who have
departed. A sacred burial. A landfill
of baptism pictures, love letters,
and family heirlooms.
If you dig deep enough you will
find the paper-mache caterpillar
I made in kindergarten. My white
dress shoes. The gold wand
from my fairy costume sits
on top like a cross, beckoning
me to come home.
At school, did the teacher call my name?
Take attendance for the first few days,
save a seat, but by the end of the week,
put my name on the list with all the other
children who had crossed: Iris, Amelia,
Francisco, Juan. A list she folds into
cranes, releases into the sky every year.
Did another schoolmate leave that year?
Maybe they are that person, I sometimes
pass on the street, recognize, see
a familiarity, their name at the tip
of my tongue. I get this urge to stop
them, look toward their direction,
until they are gone.