This that late night backseat soundscape while the homie maintains the wheel. These Spaceships Werent Built for Us is that wondrous ride with a last look in the rearview. Adjust the mirror. What do you see? I dont mean to be so American, / but I am, Alan Chazaro writes as he traverses and meditates on the various borders of our lives. Follow the music. Lean into the bass. What do you feel? There is a boneyard of buildings / inside my chest he proclaims. This is that voyage through all weve been framed bybe it bicycle spokes, eucalyptus roots, or collapsethe good, the bad, and the neon. Im down for these poems, and down for Chazaro when he says, What / is exploration without desperation? Come thru, kick it. Were all here already." Michael Torres, author of An Incomplete List of Names
"Alan Chazaro is the bard of the Bay, the bard of the barrio. Like my late grandfather, Chazaro keeps time recalling cars and songs from the past. They mark time like tree rings. They unlock portals of memory like the vinyl ridges on a record. His poems create temporal shifts and catalog neighborhood histories from Oakland to Jackson Heights. The poems are laced with references just for the homies. They're shoutouts. With These Spaceships Weren't Built for Us, Chazaro transforms the ranfla, the hooptie, and the G-ride into a spaceship, a time machine. He points our gaze to the sky and we long to take flight while simultaneously holding onto our roots and what keeps our feet on the ground." Joseph Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate and author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations
A poet, teacher, and journalist, Alans writings reek of a well-traveled critical thinker who hasnt forgotten how to imagine a brighter future. In These Spaceships Werent Built for Us, the Bay Area-bred wordsmith shows us where hes from, where he wants to go, and places no human has ever been. The running theme of space travel takes to a new perspective as it's painted by the words of a Mexican American man who loves lyrical hip-hop, culturally rich cuisine, and his family. The subject matter of Alans writingidentity and immigration, reckoning with the past and trying to make a better tomorrowspeaks to the issues of today. And in this book, Alan makes it clear: those themes will continue to resonate as long as this spaceship were flying through the cosmos, continues to operate this way. Pendarvis Harshaw, journalist and author of OG Told Me
Alan Chazaros latest collection These Spaceships Werent Built for Us cannot be more timely and necessary as it generates important discussions with lines like I wonder how many borders are crossed without us ever knowing and resistance is not letting anyone inside because resistance is a burning. These Spaceships Werent Built for Us honors the language of our abuelas remixed with the sounds from the Bay Area as we explore galaxies that can only be designed by Chazaro. Luivette Resto, Living on Islands Not Found on Maps
