From the Other Side of Night/del Otro Lado de la Noche: New and Selected Poems

I totally feel engaged by Alarcon's poems. I thank him for including poems about social issues and for including some many poems in nahuatl, a language I love although I do not speak it. All the poems are bilingual and were translated into English by the author. This is a beautiful book portraying the lives of people, places, and situations. The poems written by Francisco Alarcon are exquisite, evocative and full of passion. I loved the poems in nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. My favorite poem is called: "Mexican is not a noun" which is a poem dedicated to "students and faculty professors who were arrested for showing solidarity with two thousand cannery workers who were mostly women ". "Mexican is not a noun or an adjective, Mexican is a life long low-paying job, a check mark on a welfare police form, more than a word a nail in the soul but it hurts, it points, it dreams, it offends, it cries, it moves, it strikes, it burns, just like a verb". This is a phenomenal book for class discussion, for working in small groups and as a piece of literature that should be present in very house.