BORDERLESS BEAT

This book is a jazz riff mixed with raspy vocals, inspiring people to keep listening to the album on repeat. Its depth is heartbreaking to the point of making you appreciate everything you had and have. Its poetry is running water used to clean mud off of raw diamonds, revealing their priceless shine. The Beat of an Immigrant Chicano by Juan Cardenas is a book of poetry written as a poetic memoir, displaying what made this man Beat and how it brought him the moon, the sun, and a flower that bloomed for him to inhale its fragrance daily. Cardenas’s poetry book also received a 2021 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award Honorable Mention, which was awarded to him by the International Latino Book Awards. 

As always, my reviews are meant to show the 5-star brilliance within the pages without spoiling the reading experience, resulting from the poet’s hard work and perseverance to complete his book. It was super difficult to pick only one poem, but the one I chose to break down is called “Four Birthstones.” Its mastery glows through the darkness it displays by dropping you off in a beginning that sets up the end, creating a total effect that will leave your jaw on your shoes as you realize the privilege of having time to let your emotions return to normal without loved ones taking advantage of your desperation. 

LAUGH AND DON’T CRY

His “Four Birthstones” poem was one of those reads that will leave you speechless. From the first stanza and on, the power it wields with its words becomes clearer until it’s as clear as a window streaked with tears. It starts with, “We are selling everything, we are going to the north” (21), so by writing this as the open, the reader is dropped into a dire circumstance since selling everything to move somewhere else feels innately dire; people don’t leave this way if they live somewhere where their future is promising. Therefore, after reading this line, you can feel the tension of their situation. But then, Mr. Cardenas shows the human spirit through his mother’s reaction; the stanza continues, “We are going to America?… To California” (21); he also shows that she laughs during this line, revealing her attempt to ease her children’s tension, using humor. 

ON THE ROAD

By the start of the second stanza, you’ll notice it isn’t on a separate line as you’d expect in a poem. No, from reading it, it feels as if the poet wants you to read it this way to show that it’s one continuous experience, so the stanzas run into each other as personal experiences would in real life; this also works to intensify the feeling that the experience he went through had no breaks, so adding line breaks would make the poem incapable of authentically showing the impact of his firsthand experience. Juan Cardenas uses this stanza to show the next step; he and his family head toward the Central Bus Station with their “suitcases, pre-packed ham sandwiches for the bus trip to Tijuana” (21). After setting this up, Juan uses this opportunity to add in sensory details; “That smell again of diesel, just like the first time, at age 5, remembering watching the moon waving goodbye with her silver hair hanging in the branches of the trees at night” (21); by using the sense of smell, he communicates how his memory of his first attempt to cross is connected to the eye-watering stench of diesel exhaust fumes. It’s an unsavory memory that sets up the turn of stanza three; if you listen carefully, you can hear the ominous music.   

BEFORE WE HAD NOTHING, NOW WE HAVE LESS

Mr. Cardenas does not waste any time showing the heart wrenching next step. The first words of the stanza are “Robbed upon arrival” (21). Reading this, my heart began to beat hard and my palms started to sweat. It took me back to that powerless feeling of confusion and anger, knowing you had no power to retaliate or get your belongings back. It continues with, “Waiting forever at some seafood restaurant. We were the mindless fish decorating that hell; drinking water, starting to break, testing the thickness of our skin; fragile at the time, / so it stung” (21); to continue the stanza this way, it shows Cardenas’s masterful understanding of his horrifying and vulnerable predicament, especially since he already showed you that his family sold everything, so with them being robbed, you can’t help but feel compassion for their desperate situation.

HOWL

Unfortunately, the poem sinisterly continues, and you can’t cover your eyes since you’re emotionally invested, as is his family. Stanza four starts with a whack from a hook to the temple; “’<<Nothing is free!>>’, was told to my Mom” (21); this broke my heart because instinctively I felt the next lines were going to be dark, an accumulation of the terror of being a vulnerable immigrant mother using her life savings to cross the border. But you have to uncover your eyes and read, “All of us thinking the favors from family were done from kindness, and blood bond. I saw the surprise on my Mom’s face. She looked at her ring that contained the four birthstones of her children” (21); Ending the poem this way is real and gut-wrenching. It’s a universal display of the darkness cast upon families by greedy family members who know your terrible situation and choose to use this knowledge to take from a mother and her children; it’s even more tragic because you know this ring was the only thing of monetary value she could not sell, it’s priceless. Something she planned to keep forever. Therefore, ending the poem with her looking at the ring, it made me pause and take a deep breath; anyone who’s had to watch their mother in a similar situation will find it impossible to smile after reading “Four Birthstones” in its entirety.

LA FIN

This was only one example of Juan Cardenas’s amazing talent as a poet. The book was such a great read; it was hard to review one poem because I had a list of ones that could’ve been reviewed. For example, “Home. Run.” was a fantastic way to start his book because it puts you in the setting, showing how this moment is impacting the narrator as a boy. The poem “El Chiapas” had extremely poignant prose; it’s written almost like a fusion of personal essay and poetry, revealing the way this life and death journey connects the migrants, giving them a connection few will ever experience. You also have to check out “Desert Baptized” and experience its horrendously heart wrenching display of the guilt produced by leaving your loved ones in your homeland. It also captures the total sentiment of chapter one.

In chapter two, Juan’s poetry book takes on what it’s like after he made it to the United States. The one that stuck out to me was called “Parental Responsibility” because it focuses on the danger of letting screens raise your children predicting a bleak compassionless future will become reality if we let the screens 100% raise the next generation. Then, of course, there’s a poem about Beat mecca, also known as San Francisco; it’s beautiful how Cardenas describes the city.

Then you have chapter three. It’s written to show how the previous two chapters led him to discover himself as Beat, and what that discovery has done for Mr. Cardenas. If this was an album, Juan’s poem “The Beat of a Chicano Immigrant” would be its hit single because it brilliantly shows what makes Chicanos and him Beat. He also takes the time to end the poem by showcasing other Chicanos who are Beat; this also dubs as reading recommendations. “Doubt of Self Worth” is a beautiful in-depth look at conquering one’s self-doubt and moving on, while also communicating the immense power self-doubt possesses over immigrants. In this chapter, the poet also starts to get in touch with their cosmic side, which is also evidence of his connection to Beat. The poem “Power” is a great example of his cosmic epiphany taking place, revealing the power humanity wields for good and evil. Cardenas ends with his most important topic, but getting into that would require a spoiler warning since he ends his book appreciating those who are most important to his present and future, inspired by what was most important to him in the past.

Ending chapter three this way, it proves what’s truly important to the poet. It’s the reason he had to write this book, and the reason he had to discover his Beat in the United States. The Beat of an Immigrant Chicano by Juan Cardenas is a must-read for anyone who wants to read a child immigrant’s firsthand experience and how it provided him with an adulthood his heart always wanted.

Thank you for reading our in-depth book review about The Beat of an Immigrant Chicano by Juan Cardenas. We are not affiliated with the publisher, but here’s the link to pick up a copy.

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E. R. Sanchez is the author of Fried Potato Press’s first young adult thriller, Petaco Dreams, which will be released in 2025 after the rewrite, new title, and new cover. He also has poems and stories published online and in print. If you’d like to read his work that was published online, please click here to go to his Stories and Poetry Section.