All Our Brown-Skinned Angels

Mexican-American Raúl Sánchez raises his poetic voice in languages twice removed from the indigenous language of his ancestors, but with well more than double the fervor. Language is embodied in the essence of personal and political struggle, as evidenced in these lines from the poem "My Father Was a Bracero": "He didn't want me to live / by my strong back, strong arms / but by my words". This ardent inaugural collection by Sánchez is filled with poems of identity-cultural, familial and personal. All Our Brown-Skinned Angels is part civil protest, part personal celebration, completely impassioned.