Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Art. Winner of the 2008 PEN West Poetry Award. Juan Felipe Herrera's writings are charged with theatrical and athletic energies. A hybrid collection of texts written and performed on the road, gathered from more than thirty-five years of work in various genres, these "undocuments" are the record of an epic journey across many different borders: boundaries of nations, state lines, city limits, edges of farmland, crossings and mixtures of languages and literary forms.

From Mexico City to San Francisco, from Central America to central California, Herrera remembers everything and gives back to his native places and to the family, friends and compañeros of his Mexican/American/Chicano odyssey a scrapbook, a logbook, a journal, a multiform confession of proud hybridity and indigenous optimism. A sustained manifesto of resistance and affirmation, these rants, manifestos, newspaper cut-ups, bits of street theatre, anti-lectures, love poems and riffs tell the story of what it's like to live outlaw and brown in the United States.

Illustrated throughout with photos and artwork.

Author City: FRESNO, CA USA

Juan Felipe Herrera was initiated into the Word by the fire- speakers of the early Chicano Movimiento and by heavy exposure to various poetry, jazz, and blues performance streams. He is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. The son of Mexican immigrants, Herrera grew up in the migrant fields of California. In March 2012 Herrera was named Poet Laureate for the state of California, the first Hispanic writer to hold the position.

Reviews and Other Links
Stephen Burt @ The New York Times