Notes on the Assemblage Summary
Juan Felipe Herrera

Notes on the Assemblage Overview

The subjects of the poems in this collection range from elegiac tributes to those who have inspired the author-poet, to writings inspired by works of visual art, to dialogues between characters struggling with the collection’s core themes. All are primarily defined by thematically-central calls to revolution against what the author-poet portrays as a system of racism-defined exploitation and violence that affects and defines the situation of not only the Latinx community from which he emerges, but also the situation of other non-whites in the United States. In short, the collection tends to speak with a particular voice and perspective, but its words, ideas, and images have the potential to resound with a number of communities outside what is often referred to as the white, male, patriarchal orientation of economics and power in America.