Every Day We Get More Illegal

PRAISE FOR EVERY DAY WE GET MORE ILLEGAL:

"Every Day is a hard-hitting, witnessing collection about trauma, living as an immigrant in the US, the US-Mexico border wall, ICE detention centers, and physical familial separations."—Gabriela Portillo Alvarado, Jacket 2

"The better angels of his nature: In Every Day We Get More Illegal, Juan Felipe Herrera doubles down on hope."—David Ulin, Alta 

"What began in Herrera's Every Day We Get More Illegal as a quiet portrayal of witnessing the effects and experiences of migrating north, soon becomes an edgy yet soulful expression that shows the spectrum of suffering and marginalization of those who are undocumented."—Francisco A. Lomelí, The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Every Day We Get Illiegal is filled with poems of unflinching wisdom. . . . Herrera has perfected being direct and beautiful while knitting history into the current time."—Barbara Berman, The Rumpus

" . . .  furious, evocative, and urgent, until, with a sort of quiet peace, Herrera opens the book up to his hope for a better, kinder future, and graciously invites the reader into his vision of it."—Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed Books

"With his latest collection, Every Day We Get More Illegal, Herrera offers a kind of spiritual style guide for a time when solidarity itself is stymied by social distancing."—Roberto Ontiveros, The Austin Chronicle

"With hands firmly rooted in the soil, he reasserts the value of individual lives and stories, including his own. 'First I had to learn. Over decades—to take care of myself,' he writes. Sweeping yet precise, Every Day We Get More Illegal is an intimate and urgent call to collective action."—Poets & Writers Magazine

"The timely, urgent book from Herrera pays homage to the 'migrant children,' 'immigrant children,' those 'who died in custody,' and those 'separated on the road north,' highlighting societal issues while exploring the nuances of how silence operates within a larger political discourse. . . . Herrera's formal versatility lends subtlety and nuance to essential political considerations."—Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*

"This latest collection from Herrera continues his legacy as poet, performer, and activist after his having served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. . . . A timely and propulsive work; for all collections.—Karla Huston, Library Journal, *Starred Review*

"One of Herrera's great gifts is his ability to treat this continental divide simultaneously as a conceptual abstraction—'The Wall / it is more than an arbitrary stop or as it is called The Border it is / an arrangement of agreements of always-war'—while also humanizing its inhabitants: 'every human being in the village is an ever-opening story.'"—Booklist

"Every Day We Get More Illegal (City Lights, 2020), the slender, ferocious, tender new volume by Herrera, the first Xicano poet laureate of the United States. . . . He doesn’t need violent winds to knock down the illusion of the border—he does this with the puffs of breath from all the people he conspires to give voice to in his songs."—"Reflections on Juan Felipe Herrera, my homeboy laureate," by Luis Alberto Urrea for the Poetry Foundation

"Juan Felipe Herrera breaks open language to convey unspeakable pain alongside unfathomable strength."—Emma Ramadan, co-owner, Riff Raff Bookstore, Providence, RI

"Few poets have more laurels upon which they could rest than Juan Felipe Herrera. As the former Poet Laureate of the United States he's done more for poetry, on the page and off, than most anyone living. But in his new Every Day We Get More Illegal, Herrera not only stretches, complicates, broadens his own oeuvre, he challenges and expands what might be possible in the space of a poem."—Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf

"A prolific voice for justice, Herrera continues to see the world with compassion, a goofy sort of humor, and a liberationist's roving kind of care. These are warm poems for hard times."—John Freeman, Lit Hub Executive Editor

"Juan Felipe Herrera upholds and elevates the great ancestral lineage of our Mexicano/Chicano/World/Word Masters. The Border lives in this man. The Border(s) will never leave him. He is the son of soul anarchy, the lost stories of my America. He is the trickster magician who lifts the mirror to our faces—and allows us to see truth. When he breaks stride in this great walkabout of his, he tumbles the false world down while always showing us the Better Way. These are poems fierce and compassionate. His Journey has served him well."—Denise Chávez, owner, Casa Camino Real Bookstore, Las Cruces NM