Sannii Crespina-flores: Machetes are forged in Soft Rivers

by David Jastrow

“The first lesson is your tongue is a weapon. It can be sharp and cut deep without leaving a visible scar.” This quotation begins Forged (Machete Work), one of the many beautifully written works in Sannii Crespina-flores’ Machetes are forged in Soft Rivers, a collection of short fiction stories and poems centered around the experience of being a black woman.

Sannii Crespina-flores is a seemingly omnipresent creative presence both locally in the Philadelphia region and globally. She’s a teaching artist, advocate, and has been an activist for youth and women for more than twenty years. But it is the space between pen and paper that she finds sanctuary. She runs a global youth initiative called ‘Do Remember Me,” whose members have performed in front of the United Nations for International Youth Day. She is an independent filmmaker and producer, a mentor, a member of the Writers Guild of America (East) Indie Caucus, and founder of the Un-Inhibited Muse Film Festival. She also founded the art collaborative Yram Collective, has screened work at the 60th Cannes, and was awarded the grand prize for the short story challenge at the 15th Sundance Film Festival. Her work has been exhibited around the world. 

“You’re always in the lane,” says Crespina-flores. “So, if I’m in the lane, I very rarely look up to see what I’ve done because I am always in the process of doing something.”

Machetes are forged in Soft Rivers originated from an illness. Crespina-flores was limited from doing her other artistic endeavors, so she returned to her first love of writing. “Everything I do stems from me writing,” she says. Writing became a sanctuary and a method of self-healing. She observed people in different environments, wondering what their stories were and how they acted in public. Those stories became short stories, which became a book.

Childhood is a central theme of Crespina-flores’ writing because we all have something we are carrying from those experiences, she says. “In asking the questions that the child in me still asks, that’s how you find a lot of stories stemming from childhood in what I write,” she adds. It helps that she is a huge advocate for young people. All Crespina-flores’ work started with young people, from volunteering to teach workshops to classes covering everything from writing poetry and short stories to owning their own businesses. Teaching young people how to self-advocate was central in all those experiences.

“I think that working with young people, there’s a space I identify with, especially inner-city young folk,” she says. “Our experiences are very similar so in writing about that and working through a process of using it as healing, I’m not just healing myself, I’m giving them tools to help themselves.”

When young people are working through their individual writing processes, Crespina-flores describes it as creating a seat within the story for the reader to observe, feel, and explore. She intends to write future collections and is commissioned to write works for other people from time to time. As for her visual art, she says it all begins with some form of poetry or storytelling. Among the cornucopia of projects Crespina-flores is working on, there are creative exhibits, a short book titled Our Gods Will Not be Silent, and last year earned a grant for starting an animated short film called We are Born of Three that should be completed next year. A core focus of all these projects is serving as a teacher and advisor to young people. “A closed hand cannot receive a new blessing,” Crespina-flores says.

The writer hopes the Collingswood Book Festival will present an opportunity to share perspectives about Machetes are forged in Soft Rivers while meeting other artists who are writing from different places. “Not just from experience, but from different cultures and different stages in their life, because those always leave an imprint and an impression,” she says. “So that can always be a spark for what you create next.”

Sannii Crespina-flores will be joining fellow writer and poet Faleeha Hassan, author of the memoir War and Me, at the Collingswood Book Festival on Saturday, October 1. She will be participating in a panel with Ms. Hassan from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., at Tent 1 — Haddon and Frazier Avenues.