There Are At Least 187 Reasons to Read Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons Mexicans Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 is meant to be political and personal, provocative and soothing, historical and imaginative. Covering 36 years of Herrera’s creative work, this book is as much a hybrid of genres, languages, and styles as it is a blend of Mexican-American cultures and identities. It asks the question of what it means to be Mexican as it also asks what it means to be American. The physical and cultural borders of ethnic identity explored in this work offer multiple representations of individual and collective Mexican-American identities. In particular, the selected poems can be a wonderful tool for helping provide a historical context for older students as they examine current immigration issues in the media.

The title of Herrera’s work is a response to California’s Proposition 187, which was passed in 1994 but was later struck down by the Courts. The law sought to deny unauthorized immigrants social services, health care and public education. (Of note, unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for health care under the Affordable Care Act). The title poem uses Herrera’s characteristic anaphora and litany to illustrate the often arbitrary and illogical reasons used to prevent Mexicans from entering the U.S. both physically and culturally with the irony being that they are a part of American culture and identity already. Herrera relies on this irony as well as humor, wit, and historical context to make his statements as the ending excerpted from his “187 Reasons” demonstrates:

          Because we won’t nationalize a State of Immigration Paranoia

          Because the depression of the 30s was our fault

          Because “xenophobia” is a politically correct term

          Because we shoulda learn from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

          Because we shoulda listened to the Federal Immigration Laws of 1917, ’21, ’24, and ’30

          Because we lack a Nordic/Teutonic approach

          Because Executive Order 9066 of 1942 shudda had us too

          Because Operation Wetback took care of us in the ‘50s

          Because Operation Clean Sweep picked up the loose ends in the ‘70s

          Because one more operation will finish us off anyway

          Because you can’t deport 12 million migrantes in a Greyhound bus

          Because we got his this about walking out of everything

          Because we have a heart that sings rancheras and feet that polka

In other sections, Herrera delves into the lived experiences of individual Mexicans and Mexican Americans. In one poem, “Senorita X: Song for the Yellow-Robed Girl in Juarez,” he commemorates the mothers who have not given up seeking answers to the deaths of their daughters in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Though the homicide rate has decreased, at the height of cartel violence in 2010, the city averaged 8.5 killings per day. The killers remain unidentified. Many of the victims worked in low wage factory positions or were students. The poem is as much elegy to them as it is a type of historical documentation that humanizes tragedy and seeks to understand loss. Though it starts abstractly “Yellow-robed girl/Yellow-book schoolgirl/ Yellow horn-rimmed glasses gazing girl,” the poem moves to naming some of the individuals lost as seen in the lines “Who’s the killer Brenda Bernice Delgado?/Who’s the killer Alma Chavira?” This movement invites the reader to see the women not as statistics of violence, but as individuals. The poem rescues their lives from anonymity while highlighting the horrific acts of violence that ended them. Using such a poem with older students encourages them to look deeper into the individual lives rather than headlines.

While there are poems of witness, history, and ethnic identity, there are also narratives, photographs, journal entries, and prose poems that comprise this hybrid collection. In this layered body of work, Herrera is able to transgress multiple boundaries: the urban, youthful, and modern with the agricultural and folkloric traditions. At its best, it makes a reader question the borders of Mexican, American, and Mexican-American identities, highlighting similarities and differences, fair and unfair divisions among them, much of which is related to immigration laws and policies. As the current Poet Laureate, this book is simply one of his finest.

Additional Resources

About Juan Felipe Herrera:

• To learn more about Juan Felipe Herrera, visit the Library of Congress current Poet Laureate webpage. To read some of his poems online, visit the Poetry Foundation website. 

About Applications for the Classroom:

• September is Hispanic Heritage Month and reading Herrera’s poetry is a perfect way to celebrate. If you are using with this book with older students, we suggest selecting one or two poems such as “187 Reasons,” “Senorita X,” or “Mexican Differences Mexican Similarities.” This poem would also pair well with our lesson on Cesar Chavez.

• If you teach younger students, Herrera has written several children’s books that introduce students to migrant farmworker experience as well as to writing. Read our previous blog post reviewing some of his works for younger readers.

•  One of Herrera’s influences was the poet Allen Ginsburg who is known for his long, list-making poems and was also the son of an immigrant. Ask students to write a list-making poem of identity as they define in their own words. Have students make personal and collective, historical and current connections in their poem like Herrera.

     

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Juan Felipe Herrera Offers Insight and Inspiration into the Migrant Farmworker Experience for Youth

Recently, I excitingly told my young daughters we were going to wake up early and go berry picking at a “pick your own” farm. My three year old exclaimed “I don’t want to pick berries at a farm I want to pick them at a store.” Although it was funny, it made me realize how disconnected we are as a society to our food sources and the nameless people who make it possible for us to have fresh fruits and vegetables on our tables. 

The stereotype of a farm worker is an adult male, but according to the National Farmworker Ministry, there are up to 500 of children and teens (under the age of 18) hired as farm laborers in fields across the United States. Many of these young people are undocumented immigrants or are part of migrant farm working families. Unfortunately, most of these hardworking people go unnamed and unnoticed.

Migrant farm workers often follow the crops to sustain employment and many of the children of migrant workers go to school during the day and work several hours as well.  This lifestyle can be very disruptive to students because they move several times a year and go from classroom to classroom often not bonding with teachers or other students.  One child of migrant farmers influenced by the lifestyle and work ethic instilled by his parents was Juan Felipe Herrera, a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist, who in 2015 was appointed as the nation’s first Chicano poet laureate.

Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children with twenty-one books in total published in the last decade.

Two of Herrera’s books that depict the life of young migrant workers and the children of migrant workers are Calling the Doves/El Canto de Las Palomas (1995) and The Upside Down Boy/El Niño De Cabeza (2000). Both books are bilingual and are appropriate for elementary-age children and above.

The Upside Down Boy is a memoir of the year Herrera’s migrant family settled down near San Diego, California in order to allow him to attend school for the first time. Juanito is overwhelmed by the new school, and he misses the “campesino” way of life. Everything he does feels abnormal and makes him feel upside down. He doesn’t synch with the routine at school and when he tries to speak English, “his tongue feels like a rock.” Eventually he is able to find his voice through poetry, art, and music, with the help of a patient teacher and his supportive parents. Herrera's choice of words and the accompanying illustrations by Elizabeth Gomez tell a very important story about feeling “upside down” in a new situation in a way that young children can relate to and older students can use as a starting point for a deeper, empathetic discussion. The book was dedicated by Herrera to his third grade teacher, Mrs. Lucille Simpson, who inspired him “to be a singer of words, and most of all, a believer in [his] own voice.”

Calling the Doves won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award, an award that celebrates and inspires exceptional new writers and illustrators, who are seldom recognized in the early stages of their careers when Herrera was not well known and new to the children’s book circuit. The book bravely tells the stories of migrant workers, their struggles and their stories of travel, life on the road and random opportunities for work. The poetic vignettes and accompanying illustrations capture the unique culture of migrant workers from the point of view of a young boy. Like Upside Down Boy, this book is an excellent resource to discuss migrant workers. Herrera dedicated this book to Cesar Chavez to honor his work with United Farmworkers Union and to his parents who taught him that “inside every word there can be kindness.”

Additional Resources:

• Lee & Low Books, great friends of ours, have both reviewed books plus two more in a four book collection at a discounted rate. Click here to learn more and continue to build a diverse classroom library.  Lee and Low also provides a resource for using the books to teach and discuss “Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera with Students.”  

 

• Watch this video to see how Juan Felipe Herrera introduces Calling of the Doves and inspires young writers with tips for story writing.  Plus he reads an excerpt in English and Spanish which makes for a great classroom introduction!   

 

• After using Juan Felipe Herrera children’s’ books as a start for discussion, dig deeper with older students in this lesson plan, Interpreting the Impact of Cesar Chavez’s Early Years, to see how Chavez’s later work was influenced by his childhood as a migrant farmworker. 

 

• Read our previous blog post, “The Power of Poetry and the Immigration Experience,” for ideas on how to incorporate poetry and picture books to teach immigration.

We offer free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to #teachimmigration. Stay connected! Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration and our blog Immigration In and Out of the Classroom.