Tropico
Marcela Huerta72 pages
Perfect-bound
Cover art: Sidney Masuga
Editor: Jay Ritchie
ISBN 9781988355078
Fall 2017
today I tried to type
dad
and it autocorrected
to sad
and I thought
isn’t that always the way
I am sorry
I could not come to your party
because of my sad
do you know about my sad?
Tropico, Marcela Huerta’s debut collection of poetry, tackles grief, memory, and the experiences of a second-generation immigrant. The daughter of political refugees from Chile, Huerta shares memories of her recently departed father, who becomes a symbol for Chilean culture and leftist resistance after his passing. Through the intimate detailing of everyday occurrences, Tropico reveals how intergenerational trauma disrupts childhood and lays bare the lived effects of American imperialism.
Praise
“Marcela Huerta sifts through crumpled photos, family stories, and the past—both remembered and imagined—that tethers her to another place, scented by terror and sorrow. In these beautifully observed poems, the mundane and the cataclysmic tumble together, burnishing a daughter’s grief. With exquisite tenderness, Huerta writes her father back into being.”
– Kathleen Oliver, author of Swollen Tongues
“Huerta clearly describes the ambivalent love one can have for a father, the back and forth between being proud of a parent but having to protect yourself from them, between being at once always too close and always too far. Huerta’s words never try to reconcile this attraction and repulsion. Instead, they let them both exist in the complexity of grief, like blunt and rational facts, creating a vibrant homage to her father.”
– Julie Delporte, author of Journal and Everywhere Antennas
Reading + Teaching Guide
Translations
Tropico – Triptyque Editions (2021)
Press
Indie Book Review Podcast – A Daughter’s Love Through Poetry
Doktorak, Go! – “It is between narrative and silence that the poetry of Marcela Huerta finds its place.”
Cult MTL – “Passionate and gut-wrenching.”
Wax Poetic – Poetry From Canada (Audio)
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly – “Fusing fragments of past selves to circle around absence and loss, this slim volume contains lush explorations of grief.”
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly – “Tropico is all the best parts of the memoir, the poem, and the short story. Marcela has crafted a careful but uncompromising testament to how families can at once soothe and hurt each other, and how one can hope to cope with that lasting pain.”
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly – “A poignant collection of poems.”
Largehearted Boy – “In Marcela Huerta’s debut poetry collection, she digs to the roots of her family tree, unearthing grief, memory, and the experiences as a second-generation immigrant.”
Excerpts
Lists
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly – Poetry Bestsellers 2017
Remezcla – The Best Books From Latin American & Latino Authors in 2017 | “Huerta’s writing is by turns tough and tender, but always brilliant and startling and emotionally astute.”
Punch-In-The-Face Poetry – Fall 2017 Books by Poets of Color