Un Mango Grows in Kansas

by Huascar E. Medina

Un Mango Grows in Kansas is a collection of poems written by A Latino in Kansas as he explores the boundaries between location and identity. This collection of works is written in Spanish and English.

Genres: Poetry

134 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in Kansas, I appreciate work that seriously considers the landscape and milieu of the Midwest. Medina makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Midwest goodbye, but also writes of the feeling of being in the center of the universe while lying in a truck bed in a field beneath the canopy of night sky. Yet the collection is also a fierce indictment against racism toward Latinos; the collection begins and ends with mangoes, mango trees being absent in this northern country. Medina weaves the mango motif in his poems as he concentrates on otherness, migration, the politics of language and citizenship. Some of his poems are a little too on-the-nose or borrow rhetoric from other works (granted, many poems have epigraphs dedicated to fellow poets like Mary Oliver or John Ashbury), sounding like a "poem." When Medina loses himself, most prominently in the beginning and the end, this is where a signature voice emerges, and it is compelling.

[Dave Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un Mango Grows in Kansas is a collection of poems by Huascar E. Medina, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2019-2021), published by Spartan Press (Kansas City MO) in 2020.
Medina is a first-generation Kansan, with family roots in Panama and Puerto Rico. The Topeka-based writer and poet wrote this collection of poems in Spanish. English translation is by Julie Sellers, an associate professor at Benedictine College. All of the poetry in Un Mango Grows in Kansas appears in both Spanish and English.
Medina’s poetry carries an intriguing earthy, controlled calm mixed in with an amplified voice of strength. Some of the poems highlight an immigrant’s perspective that bridges a “place before” with a “place now.” One of the poems which I particularly like is “They Can’t Sing It Like Us:”
. . .
We will have our day / we are more than / a subject on a shelf / more than a shadow / behind you / you shed light on / we are brilliant

Other poems will connect with any reader’s reflection on the human experience. One of those is Remorse:
In death, we are embedded into earth, placed beneath dirt, / blind to sky; hidden from our plots of light. / How hard the fireflies work each night, transporting our souls from earth to universe. /
Each spirit, a filament, flickering as cargo, until freed and released into ether. / Last night, at twilight, I marked the flashes of cold light pulsing in Morse. / Let go, said the lightning bug, Let go.

Medina is a poet whose humanity is both vulnerable and resilient. We need to hear him.

[Molly Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains some beautiful insights of growing up an immigrant, a Latinx man in the heart of the Midwest. Medina offers perspectives that all Americans would be better off reading and understanding. I had to remove a star as I struggled to comprehend some of the language in this book. I read the English translation but found myself regularly looking up the Spanish words mixed in to the English. I probably should have expected this from the title but it did take away from my experience as I interrupted the flow of the poems to pull up Google translate.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection centers around the immigrant experience in the mid-west/Great Plains. The poems are written in both Spanish and English.

My favorite poems are Un Mango in Kansas (great ending to the collection), Per Aspera Ad Astra (about sunflowers), Promesas (part plea, part prayer), and KCTV News (about a newcaster who died saving two school girls from a hit-and-run).