Outside Reading #5

This book continues with more of the books and time periods written by Herrera. He includes one book called Border-Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream and Loretia Cards and Fortune Poems: A book of Lives. These two books explore very different things and are written during the same year. They explore people and different lifestyles. The second one is almost half written in Spanish. His next book is called Thunderweavers/Tejedoras de Royas. Herrera learned of pillaging and ambushing going on in Mexico and it inspired this book. It’s about four different women, following them moment by moment during these ambushes. He writes in the voice of a mother saying, “They left me, half-buried, among the fields of coffee full of smoke and leaves and mud and blood. I asked them for mercy with my open arms, but they forbade me to speak…” (Herrera 209). This book is particularly interesting to me because not only does he write all the poems in spanish as well as English, but he writes from the voice of different generations. One is a twelve year old girl, the other a mother, and still another is the grandmother. He vividly describes what they have to deal with, the emptiness and the terror. He creates a voice of the people through these four women.
Herrera hit the millennium thinking only of the present. He decided to bring everything to now because that’s all that matters. He wrote a collection called Giraffe on Fire with 28 sections all about the present. He writes, “Who are you? Bending at the jazz kitchen where they play Thelonius. Where they mash green doors on piano keys” (Herrera 225). This line really stuck out to me because I’m kind of a jazz nerd. It made me realize what he was trying to say about mixing cultures. Latin lifestyle is known to be very musical and passionate, playing a lot of what people consider jazz. But at the same time jazz is the only true American music, created here, and Thelonius Monk is one of the most famous jazz musicians ever. This really brought out to me how he is bringing together two cultures under something that is so important to both of them individually. He continues saying, “Catalonia and Rwanda swirl in the waters behind him…My childhood speaks, spellbound, and curls up. No one could own it if they wished” (Herrera 228). This brought out his idea of leaving the past in the past. His home land is far behind him now and he’s moving on, living and thriving. But, on the other hand, you will not lose your memories and your past life, no one can take it from you. I think Herrera is really trying to make a point that it is ok and safe and good for the Latinos to embrace new culture and their old will never leave them.
I think this relates to what we are talking about in persecution because all people need to adapt. People do what is best for them in order to get through situations. We all handle things differently but in the end strive for the same goal. Herrera encourages Latinos to be the voice of their country is a new world and to not hide and wish they were back where they came from.

Herrera, Jaun Felipe. All of the World in Light. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 2008.