Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera at the University of California, Washington Center, April 24,
Juan Felipe Herrera at the University of California, Washington Center, April 24,
Born (1948-12-27) December 27, 1948 (age 75)
Fowler, California
LanguageEnglish; Spanish
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Los Angeles;
Stanford University;
University of Iowa
GenrePoetry
Literary movementChicano
PartnerMargarita Robles

Juan Felipe Herrera (born on December 27, 1948) is an American poet, performer, writer, toonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017.[1] He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.[2]

Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award in 1997. Community and art have always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-1970s, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park that had been converted into an arts space for the community.[3]

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 in the last decade. His 2007 volume 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 contains texts in both Spanish and English that examine the cultural hybridity that "revolve around questions of identity" on the U.S.-Mexico border.[4] Herrera was awarded the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Half the World in Light. In 2012, he was appointed California Poet Laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown.[5]

In 2011, Herrera was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.[6] In 2015, Herrera was appointed as the nation's first Chicano or, more broadly, Latino poet laureate.[7][8]

On June 11, 2016, Herrera was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oregon State University. In August 2022, Juan Felipe Herrera Elementary School opened as part of Fresno Unified School District.

  1. ^ "Former U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera wants poetry to be joyous". Los Angeles Times. April 13, 2018.
  2. ^ Arteaga, Alfred (1997-07-28). Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities. Cambridge University Press. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-521-57492-1.
  3. ^ "Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera Brings Revolutionary Style to USC Open Book Series". Free Times. April 11, 2018.
  4. ^ Burns, John (2015). Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global, Digital Age. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-1-60497-894-0. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  5. ^ Gordon, Larry (20 May 2012). "A totally Californian poet laureate". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  6. ^ "About Juan Felipe Herrera | Academy of American Poets".
  7. ^ "Juan Felipe Herrera Named Nation's First Latino Poet Laureate". 9 June 2015.
  8. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2023-01-25.