For Jasminne Mendez, pericardial effusion and pericarditis are not just an abnormal accumulation of fluid and increased inflammation around the heart. It’s what happens “when you stifle the tears and pain of a miscarriage, infertility and chronic illness for so long that your heart does the crying for you until it begins to drown because its tears have nowhere to go.”
Diagnosed with scleroderma at 22 and lupus just six years later, her life becomes a roller coaster of doctor visits, medical tests and procedures. Staring at EKG results that look like hieroglyphics, she realizes that she doesn’t want to understand them: “The language of a life lived with chronic illness is not something I want to adapt to. I cannot let this hostile vocabulary hijack my story.”
The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Mendez fought for independence against her overly-protective parents, obtaining a full scholarship to college, a dream job after school and a master’s degree shortly thereafter. But the full-time job with medical insurance doesn’t satisfy her urge to write and perform, so she leaves it in search of creative fulfillment. In this stirring collection of personal essays and poetry, Mendez shares her story, writing about encounters with the medical establishment, experiences as an Afro Latina and longing for the life she expected but that eludes her.
Click here to listen to an interview with Jasminne Méndez about her book, Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry.
“In both her essays and lyric poems, Méndez illustrates through personal experience the haunting consequences of a divide between spirit and body. She gestures toward the necessity of resilience for people of color. And perhaps most important to the book’s development, Méndez simultaneously performs and subverts labeling, questioning its influence on identity—an investigation particularly important to ‘an Afro-Latina Dominican raised in the Deep South.’”—The Rumpus
“Through lyrical essays and pieces of poetry, Méndez offers a sharp and honest portrayal of what it means to navigate the strange corridors of being diagnosed with chronic illnesses as a young woman, to encounter the loss of a healthier self and some of the dreams that self might have once had, to reconcile the values and mindsets of her immigrant parents with the beliefs that are necessary to navigate life in the United States, and to be proud in one’s Afro-Latina identity even if its location grounds it a geographic anomaly. Her stories are at once gripping and achingly generous as she lays her life bare and dissects what it means to be ‘Woman enough to wear the color of blood and fire without fear and without trepidation.’”—Elizabeth Acevedo, author of The Poet X
“Jasminne Méndez’s words are at once incandescent and scathing. Her storytelling illumines the travails and the tenacity of a body bound to—and unbound by—place, illness and history. Her language fills in the synapses with the sweetness of mangoes, the soul of memory and an unflinching eye for witness. Her pages elucidate American intersectionality and bless all the overlooked songs.”
—Barrie Jean Borich, author of Apocalypse, Darling and Body Geographic
“Growing up in Texas, the perspicacious child of Dominican immigrants, Jasminne Méndez seems unstoppable, even when adulthood presents its own set of challenges: a chronic illness, the anguish of pregnancy. The bigger she dreams, the harder it becomes to love her body in this world. But in her glorious book, Méndez speaks her truth: an empowering journey of resilience, perseverance and the bittersweet wisdom that comes from being the woman who has had to ‘learn to suck the nectar out of sorrow.’”—Rigoberto González, author of What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth
“Jasminne Méndez is a gift. End stop. In Night Blooming Jasmin(n)e you will find what no residency or workshop can teach: self-examination. Her writer’s eye is unrelenting and compassionate. Where there are hereditary and genetic dispositions to blame, there are healings and epiphanies to celebrate. Using a fierce remedy of flash essays, personal narratives, poetry and musings, Méndez becomes our healer. Truly born of her blood, this debut is a beautiful achievement, a lasting testament to a spirit that emerged bruised, scarred but alive and ready to sing.”—Willie Perdomo, author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
“Jasminne Méndez’s fearless debut, insists on two forms—straightforward, intimate first-person essays, interlaced with poems—as the modes necessary to write the rarity of her body urgently into existence: the Black Latinx body, the female body, the ill body, the infertile body. But also, beyond the fact of the body, the tender identities in-between: faithful daughter, brilliant student, brave patient, devoted wife, hopeful mother. These conversational, frank essays allow the reader into a life filled with love and family, but also incredible hardship, heartbreak and resilience. And the poems, woven wild as sprays of jasmine into the text, are, like the flower, sharp and flint-bright as stars, and vulnerable as its petals. Méndez is a bold, necessary voice from long-neglected intersections of experience. And, thank goodness, she has arrived.”—Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, author of Beast Meridian
JASMINNE MENDEZ is a Macondo and Canto Mundo Fellow, as well as a Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) alumna. She is the author of a multi-genre memoir, Island of Dreams (2013), winner of an International Latino Book Award. She lives and works in Houston, Texas.
