Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has recently appeared in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Epiphany, Southern Indiana Review, PBS Newshour and elsewhere. This week, we visited with Ms. Villarreal to discuss her latest book of poems, Beast Meridian, which follows a first-generation Mexican-American girl in crisis surviving the painful experiences of a racialized girlhood, cultural displacement, generational trauma, familial loss, economic struggle, and violence.
Aired March 11, 2018