What makes Juan Felipe Herrera a MacArthur ‘genius’? He’s ‘the Tata of Fresno poetry’
Juan Felipe Herrera thought he received a spam call when the MacArthur Foundation called to inform the famed Fresno poet he was about to win one of the most prestigious awards of his storied career.
Herrera swiftly hung up because he didn’t recognize the phone number. When they called back again, he thought, “I better just slow down here and take the call.”
That’s when Herrera learned he had just been named as one of 22 MacArthur award recipients, a nod to his 50-year career as a bilingual poet, educator and writer whose work centers on uplifting the Chicanx community. The MacArthur awards are widely known as one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for creative and intellectual achievement.
“We both hung up the phone, and then I just was in a big old rainbow crystalline spheres of just magic, almost. That’s quite a fellowship,” he said in Wednesday morning interview.
Often referred to as the MacArthur “genius grant,” the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship is an unrestricted $800,000 prize for “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals” to support fellows in their creative, intellectual and professional pursuits.
“A distinctive voice and inspiration for generations of writers, Herrera centers the unprotected while imbuing his work with hope and a sense of possibility,” said the Oct. 1 award announcement.
This is the second year in a row a Central Valley writer has been selected for the distinguished award. Last year, Dinuba-born Mexican American fiction writer Manuel Muñoz was awarded a MacArthur genius grant. Radio Bilingüe co-founder Hugo Morales also won the grant in 1994.
“Herrera is a luminary for my generation, who lit pathways ahead so more of us might follow him into literature and community,” Muñoz said in an email to The Fresno Bee. “At the heart of his poetic practice is a great respect for the public voice and his unshakable belief that we can all participate in art. If I can do it, his poetry seems to say, so can you.”
Joseph Rios, poet laureate of the city of Fresno, described Herrera as a singular artist, a hero and “the Tata of Fresno Poetry.” Tata is an affectionate term for grandfather in Spanish.
“Sure, we love him in Fresno, but an award like this reminds us what he means to the whole country,” Rios said in an email.
The 75-year-old poet was born to farmworking parents in the Fresno County city of Fowler. He studied at UCLA and Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
He taught Chicano and Latin American Studies at Fresno State and creative writing at the UC Riverside. Herrera served as California’s poet laureate from 2012 to 2015, the year he also became the first Latino poet laureate of the United States.
Herrera has authored more than 30 books of poetry, novels for young adults, and collections for children. His 2008 poetry collection, “Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the International Latino Book Award.
He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Focal Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards and a PEN West Poetry Award. Last year, the Poetry Society of America honored Herrera with the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.
In 2022, Fresno Unified School District named a new elementary school, the Juan Felipe Herrera Elementary School, in his honor.
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‘Really significant’ for the San Joaquin Valley
The MacArthur award holds special meaning for Herrera because he says it isn’t only about his own creative accomplishments.
It’s also “really, really significant” for the San Joaquin Valley, California, and for Latinos and Latinas throughout the the Southwest, the United States, Mexico, Central America, Latin America and beyond, he said.
“A door opens for one person, but it also opens for all of us,” Herrera said.
The MacArthur award is also an important nod to the creative talent Latinos possess, he said, because Latinos rarely get this level of acknowledgment or creative awards.
“There’s a problem that I notice on occasion, which is invisibility. We’re not really fully or close to fully represented in the media at large, or in Hollywood at large,” he said.
Herrera also praised the work of current U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, a Mexican-American writer from Sonoma County.
“I’m so glad that she’s also been recognized, and it’s also excellent for our people at large and writers at large,” he said.
How does Herrera plan to use MacArthur grant?
These days, Herrera is busy with travel and poetry readings. He returned to Fresno this week from a five-state tour in the Midwest and East Coast.
As a MacArthur fellow, he expects to be very busy: “More travel, more invitations, more readings, and more writing and more publishing.”
He hasn’t thought about how he plans to use the grant funding quite yet, but he has a few ideas.
For starters, he plans to help fortify his “very big” family. “There’s a billion grandchildren and four great-grandchildren,” Herrera said with a laugh.
Herrera hopes to help his namesake elementary school publish an anthology-style book of poetry. He also wants to use the award to help “stimulate” more young poets through the Laureate Lab at Fresno State.
He even envisions partnering with The Fresno Bee for a special print edition highlighting local poets.
Above all, Herrera said he hopes to continue to inspire people from all walks of live to discover poetry and other creative outlets as a form of self expression.
“The most important thing, perhaps, is to express ourselves,” Herrera said.
This story was originally published October 10, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
