We All Watch Oprah

by Brandi Herrera Pfrehm
April 30, 2008

Juan Felipe Herrera is one of the preeminent voices in 20th-century Chicano poetry. Since the early 1970s, he’s devoted his multimedia work to challenging the notions of what it is to be a Mexican American. His poetry and prose is both provocative and experimental, possessing a drive that can only come from the revolutionist’s heart. And Herrera’s heart is devoted to busting traditional literary forms out of their tightly synched seams, giving voice to a people so often left voiceless by American culture and its insular tendencies.

After 30 years of exploration as an activist, teatrista and poet, Herrera has assembled a collection of his life’s work in “187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments, 1971-2007” (City Lights Publishers, 2007, $16.95).

“187 Reasons” is not a staid anthology. Rather, it invigorates as a hybrid scrapbook/journal/log of emotional and physical borders; psychological connections to time and space; diverse voices and the mottled songs they produce; delicately crocheted genetic connections to the Mexican patria and political barriers imposed on Chicanos.

Herrera’s assemblage of essays, poems of varying degrees and form, songs and mixed-media work aims to confront what seems to be an eternal impasse for the Chicano: straddling the fence of an imaginary U.S.-Mexican border, hobbling at the edge of an identity and never quite being able to step onto one side or the other.

In a striking poem called “Mexican Differences, Mexican Similarities” he catalogs how Americans believe themselves to be different from Mexicans. He then successfully turns the poem upside down, leaving the reader in an uncomfortable head stand, forcing us to consider how alike we actually are with what we generally perceive as the “other.”

On differences he writes, “You speak in English we speak in between what you speak / You say tomato we say salsa / You say potato we say papas / You sit at the table we serve the table / You dance on the floors we mop the floors.” He then throws our obvious similarities as modern human beings in the face of the reader: “You play baseball we play baseball / You watch Oprah we watch Oprah / You burn under the sun we burn under the sun / You speak a little Spanish we speak a little Spanish / You gotta problem with terrorism we gotta problem with terrorism / You wonder about the President we wonder about the President / You wonder about the universe we wonder about the universe / You can’t quite put your finger on our similarities / We can’t quite put our finger on our similarities.”

In “Don’t Worry, Baby,” he chronicles “104 Things a Chican@ Street Poet Worries About.” “I worry about exotic birds learning too much English / I worry about tourists who think maids are natural / I worry about the return of folk singers / I worry about people who use the word folk / I worry about soybeans invading Chicago / I worry about the receding hairline of trees / I worry about jazz running out of improvisations / I worry about the continuous supply of tomatoes / I worry about blues without color / I worry about Picasso Tupperware / I worry about people who say “Don’t worry, baby.”

These writings only further reinforce Herrera’s ability to hone in on the concerns we share as humans inhabiting the same crazy mass-marketed, politically unbalanced America. And while his insight may sometimes fly off into the world of the surreal, it is still pliable enough for the non-poet to grasp.

Likewise, any differences an Anglo reader might find between their own uncertainties and Herrera’s are less a result of his ethnicity and cultural nurturing and more related to his natural artistic leanings.

In 1970, Herrera embarked on the first formal Chicano trek to the Lacandón rainforest village in Chiapas. There he encountered a tribe of Mexican Indians on the verge of extinction: a piece of his own identity that he’d spent the better part of his formative years searching for. The experience—along with a subsequent journey more than 20 years later—changed his life, his vision and his writing. Any Chicana searching for a voice may find herself one step closer to grasping it if she is willing to traverse the paths Herrera paves. His collection is a journey of the soul, race and identity, power and struggle. And at times, even an expedition ending in cultural exultation. You don’t need 187 reasons to open Herrera’s book; one—the compelling truth.

 
posted by on 04/30/08 at 06:58 PM. [printer-friendly version]   

posted by Walt on 05/02/08 at 10:55 AM

posted by Walt on 05/02/08 at 11:30 AM