Dreamer Tells How Poetry Helped Him

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The Mexican poet Marcelo Hernández Castillo did not have to go far to find literary inspiration for his most recent work. "I was 5 years old when we crossed in [1993] and in my next book I talk about that journey," he explains of his arrival in the United States. “We cross like many other people, through the mountains, through the desert. We came as a family. I can't imagine how that would be possible now. My mother was 5 months pregnant then”.

Her family, originally from Zacatecas, settled in a town on the outskirts of Sacramento, CA, where Hernández Castillo's parents dedicated themselves to working the fields. In his school years, the now 30-year-old academic rejected Spanish to avoid others suspecting that he had no papers. Thanks to a teacher he discovered that his was poetry, but he continued working in the fields and construction to continue with his studies. His effort paid off: The young man graduated from California State University in Sacramento and was the first undocumented graduate with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

Her dream was also made possible by taking advantage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) enacted in 2012 by then President Barack Obama in order to protect the so-called DREAMers who arrived. to the United States as children and without papers. "Thanks to DACA I graduated [and] my first book came out, the second and now my third," highlights poetry award winner A. Poulin Jr., who obtained residency in 2014 and recently became a father.

His heart is equated with his talent, "both are immense and are changing the world," says Bryan Borland, editor and founder of the Sibling Rivalry Press, which supports the Undocupoets program, founded by the Mexican and two other poets to recognize the work of undocumented writers. Hernández Castillo will publish this month Cenzontle (BOA Editions), his first completely poetry book dedicated to his mother, who is studying English to read her son's books. “My only goal is to give a more complex story to our life. We are not only 'those who cross'”, he says. "I want to [let] see how you can live with joy and tragedy at the same time."