Bad Mexican, Bad American: Poems

by José Hernández Díaz

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, I tried to make a move on her. She feigned resistance at first but then aggressively kissed me back. 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 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.

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[Jordan Castinado · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is more than just José’s prose poems alone, but the prose poems hit so damn good and are so, well…prose-poemy in a way that is assertively in the tradition of surreal prose poetics but only in the way a punk rocker pocho can bring.

I had the pleasure of attending his prose poem panel at AWP (about which an old timer said to no one particular “I’ve been to [some impressively large number which for us AWP types in the MFA mills is anything more than three but was probably closer to three dozen; I digress] AWPs and that was the best panel on the prose poem I’ve seen yet”) and have been waiting impatiently for two months now for enough spare time to force myself to work my way through my bookfair stack, starting with BMBA.

(+ Bonus praise for the “Man in the [ ] Shirt” character(s), a series of recurring American/Mexican/Mexican-American pop-cultural surreal antihero everymen who appear and reappear in the collection and are used to voice Díaz’s kind of surreal zen humor in a tone, form, and framing that reminds me a lot of Marvin Bell’s “Dead Man” poems. Which is cool as shit. I digress)

Worth every page and penny.

[Jenna]

There's a lot that one can learn from this book about how to write about family, upbringing, and hybrid identities: many of us struggle with writing on these themes at one point or another, but Jose does it in a way that feels very natural, and since I know how much invisible work it sometimes takes to reach the point where one can do that, I believe these poems could serve as useful models both to students and to experienced practicing poets. Moreover, there's much that one can learn here about writing prose poems (Jose's favorite form) and about harnessing the tendencies of surrealism (Jose identifies with that lineage of comic surrealist prose poets that also includes James Tate and Russell Edson) -- about balancing the weird and the seemingly mundane, the light and the weighty, the autobiographical and the invented, the timely and the fabulistic -- as well as about using place and seasonal imagery as engines to drive poems, and about crafting endings that resist false closure. Anyone who's tried knows that, regardless of what shapes one's poems take on the page, regardless of whether one considers oneself a prose poet or a sonneteer, it's significantly harder than it looks to combine the best features of prose and verse, to mix the natural-soundingness of the first with the indefinable hyperalive magic vibrato quality of the latter. Watching Jose go to it with such apparent ease here is illuminating.

[Vincent Antonio Rendoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, surreal, and splendid. Chicanismo reflections hit HARD. However, the biggest standouts to me: the prose poetry sections. This is a difficult form to do well; Diaz makes it look easy. Spiritually similar to Latine-American folklore, these specific poems construct a delightfully weird and funny poetic universe. You just don't see that every day! Well done.

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

My favorites: My Father Never Ate until Everyone Had Eaten; At the Funeral for van Gogh’s Ear

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved finding so many prose poems and non-human (or half-human) characters in this collection that forms a portrait of Los Angeles, where many people live in the spaces between different cultures.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this collection, the poet explores his multiple identities—Mexican, American, Chicanx, El Chacal, Lizard Man, Wolverine, French Existential Novelist, astronaut, badass hombres in novelty T-shirts, Other—along with his family history and multicultural roots. The language is plainspoken straight talk, a combination of English and Spanish that’s not quite bilingual, best described in the poems “Broken” and “My Mother’s ‘Broken’ English.” The prose poems read more like flash fiction, often with strange images from fantasy, science fiction, or the supernatural. Like hummingbird graffiti.

Favorite Poems:
“Roots That Cracked the Pavement”
“Broken”
“My Mother’s ‘Broken’ English”
“The Road”
“My Date with Frida Kahlo”
“Meeting James Tate in Heaven”
“The Stranger”
“The Moon”
“Bones”
“At the Cemetery of Dead Poets”

[Deborah Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether it’s Quetzalcoatl and his Impossible orange chicken bowl at Panda Express or the funeral for Van Gogh’s ear, I love the surreal prose poems. If Jose Hernandez Diaz was a rock band the crowd would cheer when they heard the first line starting ‘A man in a …. shirt.’ Whether it’s Pink Floyd, Rage Against the Machine or Chicano Batman shirts, I’m there for them and whatever playful, surreal journey they take me on.
That said, I am drawn back again and again to the first part of the collection, My Father Never Ate Until Everyone Had Eaten hits hard and this whole section is so lyrical and moving.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about family, identity, heritage, and immigration.

from Ballad of the West Coast Mexican American/Chicanx: "My American friends think I'm too Mexican. / My Mexican friends think I'm too American. / My Mexican American friends are my road dogs."

from Broken: "He wants stability, not broken languages, which lead to broken homes. / I feel like telling him, we come from broken people who build / themselves up. I feel like telling him the brokenness in my Spanish // like the brokenness in his English, is part of who we are, / like it or not. Sure, we can try to improve it, but we have / nothing to prove."

[Bruce Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this little volume of poetry at The Tattered Cover bookstore in SW Denver. I loved Mr Diaz’s work for a number of reasons, but foremost among them were how many of the poems made me think about details my own life, which for me is the critical element of others poetry. Frankly (sadly?), if a poet’s words don’t resonate with my own life’s experiences I rarely find meaning in them. Diaz’s words resonated.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hummingbird wakes up, starts up its wings and turns into the moon. The moon puts on all the t-shirts and decides to roll down a hill, to go and faster and faster and the party really gets going. James Tate appears on the side of the road and says, "I'm here." By "Tuesday" I'm in. I love that the guy on the water was a guy on the water.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most prolific prose poets in the game returns with his sophomore full-length collection. Blending surrealism with fable and identity (and with odes along the way), it's a personal collection both magical and real.

[Reagan Kapasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liked: A woman in a Metallica shirt discovers a humble Mexican American man who creates surrealist worlds she can walk through sprinkled with family and school memories she can relate to. Disliked: nothing, already looking forward to rereading and dissecting further.

[bella · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favorite poems were probably familia, roots that cracked the pavement, the showdown, ode to a california neck tattoo, the conformist, and bones! (read this for my contemporary chicana/chicano literature class at csuf)

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read too much poetry before, but José Hernández Díaz's 'Bad Mexican, Bad American' has me hooked (it also had me missing Southern California). The poems are profound, surreal, sometimes funny, and a whole lot of fun to read.

[Chris]

Enjoyable. Many prose poems that read almost as short fiction. I liked the the character, a man in a Rage Against The Machine, (or a Chicano Batman, or Carlos Santana) shirt featured in many of the poems.
My favorite poem was “Ode To The Overlooked Minimalist Painting In The Gallery”.

[Roberto Junipero Jaquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good prose poems

[Rosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up because of the cover art. Love! Love the poems and the curation of them.

[Jose Roque Perez-Zetune · Rating 5 out of 5]

we are all the man with a chicano batman tshirt

[Carla]

A complete charmer of a book—this author’s natural optimism shines in his miniature prose poems— and you close the book, smiling.

[Lily Callaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was my first time reading prose poetry and i was not disappointed. it was silly, absurd, and full of mexican and californian representation. i really liked it and read it in two days.