Hear Juan Felipe Herrera on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders

"The apartment on 11th and C Street was a magical, two-sided box of amazing gifts.

In the sixties, while finishing middle school at Roosevelt Junior High, in San Diego, and during my first two years at San Diego High, Papa Felipe, Mama Lucha and I lived in that one-bedroom, facing the street. It was like all our other apartments – and not unlike our trailers, tarps and tents before that – with their thin walls, jalapeño-colored sheets speckled with starry holes, and giant, maple syrup-stained radios that buzzed, bopped and flickered songs all night long."

"A poetic voice with deep roots in the central San Joaquin Valley recently received a national megaphone when two new books by Juan Felipe Herrera were reviewed in the New York Times."

Juan Felipe Herrera is a well known Latino poet and the author of several dozen books. A number of these (listed below) are bilingual picture books and three are adolescent novels written in verse. In anticipation of the Cinco de Mayo holiday, Parents' Choice met with Herrera to discuss his work.

Juan Felipe Herrera at City Lights Books



Juan Felipe Herrera, caught in the act of creating art on the sidewalk in front of City Lights Books at the 187 Express Tour launch on Nov 15, 2007.

Scroll down to the podcast with Juan Felipe Herrera and author Ky-Phong Tran

"[Juan Felipe] Herrera's book is a collection of his poetry, essays and reflections over 30 years of activism on behalf of border peoples, border generations, border languages."

"Spoken word has its own cultural systems, canons, genres, institutions, actors and audiences which generate its values. Academic poetry, although related, is another cultural arena and another class sector. The less borders between these is best.

Another way to put is that Spoken Word by its very nature is public, oral, interactive, spontaneous, experimental and subversive. Because of these transgressive and explosive qualities, Spoken Word thrives at the margins. Otherwise, it would be more like its fair-haired cousin, text-centered academic poetry, which lives closer to the center of the literary capitalist paradigm, more or less. The problem arises when poets begin to quote themselves and cease to speak and also, as you say, loose touch with the larger world of conversations and silences."
—Juan Felipe Herrera

"An author and performer told a crowd of University of Wisconsin students Thursday understanding Mexican border crossers' struggle may be the way to find a solution to the hotly debated immigration and border security issues.

Juan Felipe Herrera, an author, performer, poet and teacher, spoke at Helmsley Theatre about the plight faced by Latin Americans crossing the United States border."

"Mr. Lou Dobbs represents a tired attempt to speak for the 'people.' Of course, he is at the soft front of the larger and more hardened 'Populist' cadre, such as the Minutemen and other buttoned-up ideological militias. What is pernicious about this 'fluffy' media point of view, this paternal figure that fans its winks and smiles into our living rooms, is that it owns a cool cosmopolitanism, a keen double-standard."

"Congress debates immigration legislation, Americans grow more polarized in their opinions, and Juan Felipe Herrera provides a fresh and accessible perspective on this crucial human rights issue through this collection of his poetry, prose, and performance."

Rigoberto González on Juan Felipe Herrera.