[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 16970]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


              HONORING THE SERVICE OF JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. JIM COSTA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, November 2, 2015

  Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the work and celebrate 
the achievements of United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. 
Mr. Herrera is a California native and the first Latino in history to 
become a Poet Laureate. He took up his duties of Poet Laureate this 
fall by opening Hispanic Heritage Month at the Library of Congress with 
a reading of one of his works.
  Mr. Herrera succeeds Charles Wright as the 21st Poet Laureate and 
joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the 
position, including the late Philip Levine who was a Fresno native and 
former professor at the California State University, Fresno. Mr. 
Herrera was previously appointed as California Poet Laureate by 
Governor Jerry Brown and served from 2012-2015.
  Born in Fowler, California in 1948 to migrant farmworker parents, Mr. 
Herrera spent his early life living in tents and trailers with his 
family throughout the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas Valley 
following the seasonal crops. His experience as a campesino has 
strongly influenced his works. Traveling from the San Joaquin Valley to 
San Diego's Logan Heights and San Francisco's Mission District gave him 
three distinct California experiences, which is where he draws his 
inspiration from. Growing up in the '60s and attending college in the 
'70s during the Chicano Movement inspired Mr. Herrera and his writing 
style, which fuses wide-ranging experimentalism with reflections on 
Mexican-American identity.
  Mr. Herrera graduated from San Diego High School in 1967 and was one 
of the first waves of Latinos to receive the Educational Opportunity 
Program scholarship to attend the University of California, Los Angeles 
(UCLA). He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Anthropology from 
UCLA, a Master's degree in Social Anthropology from Stanford 
University, and a Master's of Fine Arts degree at the University of 
Iowa Writer's Workshop. He has worked as a poet for over 40 years 
throughout California at various colleges, universities, migrant camps, 
continuation high schools, juvenile halls, and prisons.
  Among his many works Mr. Herrera is the author of 28 books of poetry, 
novels for young adults, and collections for children. He published his 
first collection of poems, Rebozos of Love in 1974 and some of his 
subsequent work includes Exiles of Desire (1985), Border-Crosser with a 
Lamorghini Dream (1999), and Senegal Taxi (2013). Mr. Herrera has also 
published 11 young adult and children's books, including The Upside 
Down Boy (2000), which was adopted into a musical and most recently 
Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes (2014), a picture book showcasing 
inspiring Hispanic and Latino Americans.
  Mr. Herrera's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim 
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, two Latino Hall of 
Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN Open Book Award. He has also received the 
PEN USA National Poetry Award, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, two 
Americas Awards, two Pura Belpre Author Honor Awards, the Independent 
Publisher Book Award, the Ezra Jack Keats Award, and fellowships from 
the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Stanford University Chicano 
Fellows.
  Among his writing and social activism, Mr. Herrera also served as 
Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 2011. He has served as 
the Chair of the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department at 
California State University, Fresno, and also held the Tomas Rivera 
Endowed Chair in the Creative Writing Department at the University of 
California, Riverside, where he taught until retiring in 2015.
  Since his retirement, Mr. Herrera has become a visiting professor in 
the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the University of 
Washington-Seattle. He currently resides in Fresno, with his five 
children and his partner, fellow poet, and performance artist, 
Margarita Robles.
  Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I ask my colleagues in 
the House of Representatives to join me as we honor and celebrate Juan 
Felipe Herrera for his dedication to poetry, his community, and 
education.

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