Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America

by Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera journeys to the Maya Lowlands of Chiapas on a quest for his Indio heritage and a vision of the multicultured identity emerging in America. In a variety of narrative voices, poems, and a play arcross time, he traces the Maya's survival and resistance in the face of invaders.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 24, 1997

About the author

Juan Felipe Herrera is the only son of Lucha Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera; the three were campesinos living from crop to crop on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. 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 award in 1997. He is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist who draws from real life experiences as well as years of education to inform his work. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park converted into an arts space for the community.
Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children in the last decade with twenty-one books in total.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!

Disclosure: I went to college with the author. Note: The anecdote about Jimi Hendrix wasn't totally fictional--I was there and it happened just about as he said.

[Kate Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Herrera is a fabulous poet and playwright. The book is disjointed but the poetry still shines. No need to read this book cover-to-cover. The poetry can be enjoyed and understood one poem at a time. Anyone interested in the destruction of the Mayan people and their culture will understand the need for this book. Herrera is a lost man looking for answers in his native land.