Half the World in Light is a collection of poems spanning about four decades of Juan Felipe Herrera’s career as a poet. The poems are greatly inspired by the Chicano culture, which Juan descends from culturally. Despite the poems being rooted in the Chicano culture, Juan finds a way to write his poems from the perspective of many people in that culture. In one of the poems, he’s a child of a farmworker working illegally in the United States, and in another, he is an activist who fights for the rights and freedom of his people. Juan finds many ways to connect with minorities, not just Mexican-Americans but also African-Americans and others all over the world. This is because of their shared experience of oppression. The poems are very deeply rooted in minority oppression that someone who might have not experienced oppression first-hand might not understand or feel the weight of his poems.
Juan also delves into the struggles of an artist in one of the poems. Since he’s a poet himself, he perfectly portrays the struggles that artists from minority backgrounds face especially when everyone around you is telling you to stop having dreams and focus on the little things that will not be easily shattered. Juan exposes the cycle of failure in minority families. When a father is unable to achieve his dreams, he inflicts the same negativity knowingly or unknowingly to his children because he either wants to protect them from the brutal world that he has seen as a failed artist, or he outright doesn’t want his children to be better than him.
Juan uses his success to inspire his poems. He often encourages the minority groups to believe in the dreams and not allow them to be shattered by those who might find it silly or outright dangerous. He speaks for the voiceless and isn’t afraid to be political in his poems. Juan does not compromise the messages in these poems to appease the audience. This collection of poems sometimes comes out as chaotic and inconsistent because he expresses himself wildly over 40 years. As the reader, you notice his growth and flaws as he becomes older in front of your eyes through these poems.
The poems are sometimes hard to understand because of the back and forth from English to Spanish. Some are also hard to decipher because of the real-life experiences that only a few can relate to. A few re-reads might provide much-needed insights, but Juan is an erratic poet and his poems show clearly. Sometimes he sounds frustrated and fed up while sometimes he’s calculated and composed. As the poems progress through the years, you notice the maturity of his poems as he grows older. He’s more aware and comfortable with his opinions than before. Juan Felipe Herrera is highly regarded as a great poet who has emerged from the Chicano culture and reinvented how poems are written, but Juan is still an activist deep down who uses poems as a way to air out his opinions on the things that affect him and his people and the minorities of the world on a personal and isolated level.
