Description
A ship is a paradox, both home and grave, wood and water, forward-venturing and anchor to the past: like magic and miracle, it transforms all who sail aboard her in ways unspeakable.
In 2014, Cristina J. Baptista was one of 85 people selected to sail aboard the world's last remaining wooden whaleship, the 1841 vessel Charles W. Morgan. The result of this 38th Voyage of the Morgan is Taking Her Back, a poetry collection that gives voice to the immigrant experience, particularly those of the Portuguese figures once called by anthropologists the "invisible minority." Combining historical records, news reports, literary allusions, myths, and personal experience, Taking Her Back reclaims the lost voices of the thousands of whalemen-often illiterate, mostly diminished-who kept so much of the world afloat.
Ultimately, these poems illuminate, as sun reflecting upon the sea, the depths of a human history and the roots of a forgotten American past. Like lines of rigging linking parts of a ship, the poems in Taking Her Back connect the past, present, and possible future through a lens of antiquity and personal nostalgia-and a haunting space between them.
About the Author
Cristina J. Baptista is a first-generation Portuguese-American writer and educator whose work has appeared in New Millennium Writings, Adanna, DASH, The Cortland Review, Structo, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. Her poem "Trouble Woman" was nominated by Structo in the 2016 Forward Prizes for Poetry. In 2012, a collection of her poetry won an Academy of American Poets Prize; in 2008, she won The Baltimore Review's Poetry Prize. She is also a 38th Voyager-one of 85 people in the world selected to travel on the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, an 1841 wooden whaleship that is the last remaining one in the world. In collaboration with Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea, Cristina wrote Taking Her Back: Portuguese Presence & the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, a collection of poetry written while serving as one of the Voyagers. The collection documents the Portuguese immigrant experience aboard whaleships from the past through the present. Additionally, Cristina holds a Ph.D. in English from Fordham University in New York City. A scholar of Modern American Literature, she has presented her research on the Portuguese-American experience and Lusophonic presence in American literary works. Currently, Cristina teaches at a private school in Connecticut, where she also mentors an award-winning student-run literature and arts magazine and helps coordinate an annual Writers Festival for local high school students.
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