Love After the Riots

by Juan Felipe Herrera

poetry, a fin-de-siecle epic of the barrio

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 1996

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

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Described as "a fin-de-siecle epic of the barrio," Love After the Riots is a collection of poetry that explores intimacy and revolt across a Thursday and Friday during police riots in L.A. Each poem (titled by the time of day or night) feels like a snapshot, a small vignette of a moment that simultaneously reflects the chaos of the riots ("—outside, yes, there is / chalkdust & eighteen wheelers on fire."), the cameras that "keep getting in the way," the societal oppression of "vested cops", while also capturing the intimacy of lovers exploring the strange realities of each other ("She digs into me. / Nervous snails / on her bellybutton, / my tropical tongue."). What makes this collection beautiful for me is this intersection between the wide world and these private moments.

"Hear the footsteps. The flower shriek in my hand
sways the flood down the stairs.

We talk about red sirens and wonder
about our tongues. I wonder.
In this apartment everything is possible."

— from "9:40 pm"