Empowered by mentorship, CWU English grad sets out to change the world

Karla Maravilla knew she wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade. Then, in high school, she realized she wanted to be a teacher, too, so she could encourage others like her to aim for graduate school.

"I want to be able to keep teaching true history from multiple perspectives, so that it can become the true history of us all," said Maravilla, who seeks to expand Latinx representation in higher education through her work. "Taking all these literature courses, I was largely reading from White authors and White poets, and I feel we need to diversify that."

As a double major in professional and creative writing and language and literature, Maravilla had access to the voices of hundreds of poets, yet she found herself missing one who represented her and her background. She hesitated to add her own voice to the mix, until she met CWU Senior Lecturer of English Xavier Cavazos.

"He's been so incredibly helpful, and I don't think I would be here today if he hadn't read my poetry and pushed me to keep going," said Maravilla, a first-generation college graduate who grew up in the Yakima Valley town of Granger. "He helped me put together and submit my first poetry collection as an undergraduate, which made me a semifinalist for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, one of the biggest prizes for Latinx poets in the U.S."

Cavazos encouraged Maravilla to join the McNair Scholars Program, a national organization dedicated to helping students from underrepresented communities achieve their academic goals beyond their bachelor's degree. With Cavazos as her faculty mentor, along with Professor of English Christopher Schedler and Latino and Latin American Studies program director Christina Torres Garcia, Maravilla refined her voice to speak more clearly on the subjects of her passion. In her ability to write, she saw an opportunity to deepen what, for many, is a surface-level understanding of the Latinx experience.

"It's difficult, because Latinx is a label, and it's marketable," Maravilla said. "I feel that people don't see the struggle and the identity behind it; they're just trying to profit from it. No matter what I write, my poems are always going to be politicized, and they're always going to be labeled 'Latina.' That's why I need to write about all the different experiences that I and many others have had to deal with, especially at this moment in history. We're not just a label, and we're not something to be controlled."

Maravilla's college experiences helped get her work published in the Poetry Northwest journal, earn an Outstanding Presentation award at SOURCE, and read her poetry at the College of Arts and Humanities Advisory Board meeting, the English Department's Lion Rock Visiting Writers series, and Collapse Contemporary Art Gallery in Wenatchee. She also regularly performs with Cavazos as a duo, delivering messages from their shared experience to audiences all over the country.

"No matter where we meet up, he always has my poems in his hand, ready to go," Maravilla said. "He's like, 'let's do it,' and we go on stage and perform together. We're going to be doing a set together at Notre Dame, too, which is really exciting."

Now that CWU commencement is behind her, her next step in what's sure to be a long and fruitful career is an English PhD program at the University of Notre Dame. Maravilla says that the adventure ahead of her is equal parts scary and uplifting.

"I'm relieved, ultimately, but also very sad to be saying goodbye to the people I got to know here," she said. "It's that final, sudden realization that I'm moving beyond this place, and won't come back until I'm a much different person. In a way, that's exciting, too, because I get to fall in love with this place all over again. It's frightening, and it's exciting."

Reflecting on her journey to graduation and beyond, Maravilla saw herself grow and change as new challenges and opportunities arose. Now, she hopes others will continue to discover the power and self-fulfillment that one can only find by learning to see their true self.

"It takes loving yourself. That may seem strange, but it really takes sitting down and having conversations with yourself and understanding that you're going to go in so many directions, go to so many places, and you're going to change as a person over and over again," Maravilla said. "This will be the toughest relationship you will ever have with another human being, and through all of that change and confusion and metamorphosis, you have to love yourself."