Discover The Surreal Poetry Of Chicano Poet Jose Hernandez Diaz!
L.A. Chicano Poet, Jose Hernandez Diaz, has a new book and EPCCs Papagayo Project is bringing him to The Pink Cloud in El Paso, TX for a reading and book giveaway! Jose Hernandez Diaz is kind of a big deal. You don't get to be a poet with almost 30,000 followers on X (formerly twitter) without making a big impact. Diaz is visiting El Paso to read form his new book, 'Bad Mexican, Bad American" on Wednesday, April 17th.
The Papagayo Project is a pretty incredible part of EPCC that consistently holds amazing literary events for the El Paso community. Papagayo is responsible for bringing many big names from the literary world to the borderland and Diaz is just the latest. The Pink Cloud has also been a favorite venue for Papagayos events. The Pink Cloud is a patio bar that serves food but is also connected to 2Ten Coffee Roasters, a really fantastic local café.
Diaz' book seems to explore different aspects of Chicano life through a surreal poetic lens. Here is a short description of the book from the publisher, The University of Chicago Press.
"This collection of poems by Jose Hernandez Diaz showcases the unique style that has made him a rising star in the poetry community.
In Bad Mexican, Bad American, the minimalist, working-class aesthetic of a “disadvantaged Brown kid” takes wing in prose poems that recall and celebrate that form’s ties to Surrealism. With influences like Alberto Ríos and Ray Gonzalez on one hand, and James Tate and Charles Baudelaire on the other, the collection spectacularly combines “high” art and folk art in a way that collapses those distinctions, as in the poem “My Date with Frida Kahlo”: “Frida and I had Cuban coffee and then vegetarian tacos. We sipped on mescal and black tea. At the end of the night, following an awkward silence during a conversation on Cubism, we kissed for about thirty minutes beneath a protest mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros.”
Bad Mexican, Bad American demonstrates how having roots in more than one culture can be both unsettling and rich: van Gogh and Beethoven share the page with tattoos, graffiti, and rancheras; Quetzalcoatl shows up at Panda Express; a Mexican American child who has never had a Mexican American teacher may become that teacher; a parent’s “broken” English is beautiful and masterful. Blending reality with dream and humility with hope, Hernandez Diaz contributes a singing strand to the complex cultural weave that is twenty-first-century poetry."
You can visit the page to read reviews on the book or find out more about Jose Hernandez Diaz.
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