Juan Felipe Herrera: Latiné environmentalism & the Chicano/a Literary Movement
This learning guide provides a brief overview of Juan Felipe Herrera’s work. It includes discussion questions to guide conversations and activities for students and learners of all ages.
Written by: Kathy Aguilera, Sophia Lawrence , Lauren Cooper, Fabian Espinoza, and Vale Martinez.
Environmental Storyteller Spotlight: US Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-2016) and is the first Latino poet to hold the position. From 2012-2014, Herrera served as California State Poet Laureate. Herrera’s many collections of poetry include California Brown: Illuminations & Hollers; Every Day We Get More Illegal; Notes on the Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He is also the author of Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include: I Am the Future; SkateFate, Calling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth.
Understanding the Environmental Story & Issue
Latiné environmentalism and the Chicano/a Literary Movement
Juan Felipe Herrera describes poetry as calling attention to “the need for a reality we could make and push into the future.” The attempt to create a more ecologically sound future is captured by the broad field of environmentalism. Latiné environmentalism arises from a deep-rooted connection to agriculture and rural lifestyles. In Latin American countries, reverence for the natural world is often embedded in belief systems and daily life rather than seen as a separate, distinct space, as often depicted in Western romanticism. This contributes to the ecocentric perspectives and respect for the natural world often embedded in Latiné and Chicano/a culture.
Juan Felipe Herrera’s work grows out of this larger connection and, more specifically, from the Chicano/a literary movement. Rooted in the socio-political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano/a literary movement highlights the search for belonging in the US while acknowledging and uplifting efforts for better representation, health care, and work conditions. Chicano/a writers often confront real and imagined natural landscapes within their artistic expressions—mythical homelands, agrarian pastorals, and reflections on the US/Mexico border are often the backdrop of Chicano/a stories, poems, and artistic responses.
Growing up as the son of migrant farmworkers, Herrera’s experience of the land was at once deeply rooted and ephemeral. He describes his childhood as “very fragile, transient—and beautiful and quiet. We would stay put, planting corn, until it was time for my parents to find new work, which meant we moved out, ready to start again elsewhere. But while we were in one place, I felt a communion with it, and its farm animals, open spaces, the land itself.” The tension between this profoundly place-based relation to the earth and the impermanence inherent to migrant farm work resurfaces and is rendered anew within Herrera’s writing. For Herrera, the rooted rootlessness of migrancy offers an open-ended and adaptable way of experiencing the world while still remaining tied to place and heritage.
Work featured in the 2024 “Futurismo” exhibit on display at La Casita Cultural Center.
In Chicano/a poetry such as Herrera’s work, poems chart the entanglement between humanity and the environments humanity inhabits, takes care of, and lays waste to, while simultaneously laying bare the long-standing political and social inequities that shape these relationships, most especially in regard to the US/Mexico border. Herrera, like other Chicano artists, directly confronts this sense of belonging and unbelonging created by the border and histories of colonization. Chicano/a literature transcends and breaks the linguistic, social, and generational barriers imposed by the physical border.
Borders, particularly the US/Mexico border, are porous, transitory areas. Prior to the construction and policing of the border, many families had ties to both land and people on either side of it. The duality of Spanish and English in Chicano/a literature shows the distinct histories, cultural significance, and global influences they share and showcases the blend of culture and love that these languages hold. In many parts of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, people often use these languages interchangeably, creating new fluid dialects and slang terms that display the rich cultural exchange within bilingual communities. However, this same use of Spanish and English can create division in the context of political independence and social identity.
Herrera’s poetry is often celebrated for its ability to integrate both Spanish and English seamlessly. Herrera explains that “this is what the life of a migrant worker is about: a sequence of episodes, the feeling of being rootless. Only on the surface though, because actually we had roots. Not to be tied to a place has its benefits, offering you freedom. Yes, Spanglish frees me, since Spanish is located in one part of my brain and English in another.” Herreras' work exemplifies the power and fluidity of bilingualism, pulling from his personal experiences as a Chicano, the son of migrant farmworkers, and a native Spanish speaker, he is able to infuse his poetry with rhythm, imagery and oral traditions seen in both languages. In his poetry these two languages coexist in harmony, highlighting the complexity and cultural identities of these diverse communities.
In Syracuse, both the La Casita Cultural Center and Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact work to intentionally generate a future that emerges from the duality and fluidity inherent to Chicano/a lives and art. Using performance, visual arts, and STEM, La Casita engages youth to celebrate Latiné culture through creative practices. For the 2023-2024 academic year, they are hosting “Futurismo Latino,” a collection of Chicano art featuring local artist Cayetano Valenzuela, who describes his work as “seeking to construct images that embody far off possible futures that are informed by how we carry our culture, our family, and our ancestral memory with us.” Point of Contact does this work by generating creative dialogue across disciplines, cultures, and geographies through visual and verbal arts.
2024 “Futurismo” exhibit on display at La Casita Cultural Center.
Juan Felipe Herrera’s Language of Home
Juan Felipe Herrera’s 2020 poem “Touch the Earth (once again)” is split into two halves. The first, beginning with its opening declaration of “This is what we do:” (1), lists the manifold types of labor performed by migrant workers within the United States before moving into the second half that implores the reader to notice: how they bend in the fires no one sees / notice: their ecstatic color & their knotted shirts'' (15-16). The final line of the poem reminds the reader of their own implication in this labor: “…notice: / how they touch the earth—for you” (23).
In Herrera’s poetry, the land is worked, touched by the hands of those whose labor makes abundance and flourishing possible: “that almost-magical watermelon / & the speckled melon & the honey-dew” (12–13). 2008’s “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way”, written in Spanglish, similarly focuses on the bountiful and healing relationship between humanity and agricultural production. Herrera ties ecological abundance to poetry and song: “with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos / que cargamos cada día” (2–3), making clear the connection between the flourishing of the earth, the flourishing of our bodies, and the flourishing of our souls.
In interviews, Herrera has pointed to his mother’s influence as the source of his love of language and song: “My mother was the superb natural teacher. And she loved teaching me. She also loved adivinianzas, cuentos, canciones. She loved language in general.” While her parents took her out of school as child, she taught herself how to read and write, passing these skills and an appreciation for the flexibility and musicality of language onto her son: “It was she who taught me the Spanish alphabet…I remember walking with her in downtown Escondido and she would enunciate the letters: ah, ah, beh, beh, seh, seh…, in other words, a, b, c. Then she would tell me a cuento. Or she would sing a cancion. The sidewalk was my open-air school”. He traces his poetics to this moment of connection centered in the “open-air” and family storytelling.
In another interview, Herrera recounts his mother’s unfulfilled dream to be a performer:
“She wanted to do that with all her heart, body, and soul, but she was held back because she was a woman. And that’s it. A big, old, line was drawn. That was her story. And it really got to me…I waged a little war with myself and with society. I was going to get up there, one way or another, and somehow, along the way, I was going to bring her into the stories.”
The expansiveness of Herrera’s verse, its wide array of subjects, linguistic influences, genres, and forms opens up a space for individual and collective histories of culture, place, sorrow, and joy.
While “Touch the Earth (once again)” focuses on the experience of migrant workers as profoundly rooted within the land and a key aspect of the agricultural, social, and economic ecosystems of the United States, Herrera’s 2008 poem “Exiles” offers its flip side.
“Exiles'' focuses instead on the way borders fracture and break relationships with nature and place. It opens with an epigraph from Edvard Munch’s diary: “and I heard an unending scream piercing nature.” Herrera uses this image to ground the presentation of immigration as a moment of unbelonging, dislocation, and legally inflicted brutality that violently ruptures nature: “They are in exile: a slow scream across a yellow bridge” (8).
An estimated 73% of agricultural workers within the US are immigrants, and around 50% of agricultural workers are undocumented. Looking at these poems together asks us to consider the contradiction— what it means for those living in the United States to purchase food grown by migrant workers in US soil while the country’s immigration policies create this state of profound dislocation as people are made exiles by man-made borders rupturing nature.
Poems such as “Water Water Water Wind Water” (2008) and “In the Cannery the Porpoise Soul” (2008) explicitly ask the reader to consider environmental injustices. “Water Water Water Wind Water” looks at the environmental tragedy of Hurricane Katrina while reminding us of the structural injustices and exploitative practices that caused such a high human and ecological toll. The poem splices together a series of vignettes, tragedies, and detritus in its attempt to represent the hurricane, pointedly placing together: “towels and glass gasoline coffins” (31) and earlier in the poem referring to “the wet night jagged in the oil” (18) as the poem insists on our understanding such environmental devastation within the context of fossil fuel use and capitalism. “In the Cannery the Porpoise Soul” links the experience of exploited laborers with damage done to porpoise populations by commercial tuna fishing. The poem presents the human and ecological toll of such abusive capitalist practices as intertwined: “(under the table blood & payrolls / swim to the shores on a crucifix of oil)” (8–9).
Herrera’s poetry engages with enmeshed histories of environmental and social injustice, reminding us that poetry is made out of incredible suffering and incredible joy, the song and the howl that carry us through each day, lighting the way to our “jagged ascensions.
Some Terms to Know
Defining Ecopoetry & Pastoral
Chicano/a/é: An American of Mexican origin or descent. Although the terms “Chicano/a” and “Mexican American” are often used interchangeably, Chicano/a adds a political taste, a term that comes with a righteous self-awareness of a deeper cultural identity that cannot be divided from the social and material struggles. Originally used as derogatory terms for Mexican-Americans, “Chicano/a” was successfully reclaimed by young civil rights advocates in the 60s and 70s. This re-appropriation helped to reclaim the identity and power of such a rich, cross-cultural heritage that made their mark in what is now the U.S Southwest.
Ecopoetry: “Ecopoetry” is a genre of poetry with a strong ecological emphasis. While the terms “ecopoetry” and “ecopoetics” grew out of the environmental movements of the 20th century, as the examples above demonstrate, humans have always been writing poetry about the ecosystems we’re part of. Ecopoetry most often carries with it an ethical imperative and sense of responsibility for the earth. It is an attempt to understand and critically engage with ecology, taking seriously the questions of ecological disaster, climate change, and the racist, sexist, and colonial legacies which have shaped not only our relationships with the environment, but also the environment itself.
Environmental Justice: Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and involvement of all people regardless of race, color, nation origin, or income in the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. It demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all people, free from any bias or discrimination. Environmental justice calls for the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and the Earth’s renewable sources in the interest of providing a sustainable future for humans and all other living things.
Discussion Questions
Herrera said his parents passed down stories to him which ignited his own love of storytelling. Who in your life has passed down stories to you? What do they say about your family, community, or place?
Herrera describes how his range of linguistic influences has impacted the subjects he explores in his literary works. How have your experiences around language shaped how you write and communicate? What does language mean to you?
How do borders influence our geographic and cultural outlooks and identities? How do they shape representations and experiences of the natural world?
In what language(s) do you think, dream, and/or write? How do you think it may impact the way you experience storytelling?
Activities & Writing Prompts
Below are prompts and activities for learners of all ages.
Read “Water Water Water Wind Water”
In “Water Water Water Wind Water” Juan Felipe Herrera describes the impact of a disaster on the Gulf Coast, and surprises the reader with beautiful descriptions of the terrible scene, including “kind flames” and “carnations across the sands.”
Creative Writing prompt: Write your own poem that brings out the beauty in something negative.
Read “Exile Boulevard”
In “Exile Boulevard,” Herrera combines written and visual storytelling to capture the emotions associated with his story. He manipulates the appearance of words within the poem, by forms of repetition, twisting, overlapping, or stretching, to better capture the feelings evoked by language.
Creative Writing prompt: Write your own poem, and be creative with the placement of words. How can you emphasize different words by changing the way they appear?
Read “Touch the Earth (once again)”
In “Touch the Earth (once again),” Herrera calls attention to some often unnoticed and unappreciated agricultural labor. His use of repetition and listing emphasize the many people and actions that are overlooked.
Creative Writing prompt: Write your own poem about something that goes unnoticed, and consider the use of repetition to emphasize its importance.
Listen to “i am not a paid protestor”
Listen to this two-person reading of “i am not a paid protestor” by Juan Felipe Herrera. In this poem, the two speakers are unproductively arguing over whether or not one individual is a paid protestor.
Creative Writing Prompt: Write a poem that follows a repeated conversation or argument between two speakers. Think about conversations, arguments, or discourses you have had repeatedly with a person or group for inspiration.
Read “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way”
Herrera often mixes Spanish and English in his poetry. If you are multilingual, experiment with writing poetry in the different languages you know. You can blend different languages together in one poem.
Additional Resources
IAdditional Resources
Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/juan-felipe-herrera)
Visit the Poetry Foundation page for Juan Felipe Herrera’s biography and more of his poetry.
Poets.org (https://poets.org/poem/five-directions-my-house)
“Five Directions to My House”
In this short listing poem, Herrera invites you to a sense of home through rich imagery.
Listen as Juan Felipe Herrera recites his poem “We Shall Build a New House Green” where he offers hope, color, and a sense of healing for the future of humanity, our planet, and the interconnectedness of it all.
Interviews
Ronslate (https://www.ronslate.com/a-conversation-with-juan-felipe-herrera/)
This conversation with Juan Felipe Herrera discusses modes of expression, his writing style and process, physical creation of art, and his intention to tell stories through his poetry that are not told enough.
In this 2017 interview, Herrera talks about breaking borders, highlighting humanity through his art, and engaging with the volatile political climate at the time.
ArtSpeak (https://artspeak.fiu.edu/interviews/juan-felipe-herrera-3/)
Herrera speaks on his evolution as a writer and what messages his voice carries to his audiences.
The Common (https://www.thecommononline.org/farmworker-days-ilan-stavans-in-conversation-with-juan-felipe-herrera/)
Learn about the formative experiences of Herrera’s childhood in a mejicano farmworker’s family.
World Literature Today (https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/interviews/walking-empty-conversation-poet-juan-felipe-herrera-crystal-ac-salas)
Herrera reflects on his experience as the US poet laureate, his thoughts on modern activism, and the importance of openness in his storytelling
Chicano/a Literary Movement
Rudolfo Anaya Digital Archive (https://anaya.unm.edu/chicanoliterature)
Visit the Digital Archive for the history and context of the Chicano Movement, the reclamation of Chicano/a identity, and themes of the growing volume of Chicano/a literature
