The Art of Exile

Author: William Archila

Publisher: Bilingual Review Press (2009)

In The Art of Exile, William Archila asks readers in the United States to engage with a subject seldom explored in American poetry: the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s and its impact on Central American immigrants who now claim this country as home. In language that is poignant and often harrowing, the poet takes us on a journey from Santa Ana, El Salvador, to Los Angeles, California. Archila bridges race and class, metaphor and reality with astuteness, mingling humor and pain with a skill that denigrates neither.

"A poet of the heart and head, of the personal and public, at times William Archila's poignant poems make me hear and feel an echo of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo."

–Yusef Komunyakaa

2010 International Latino Book Award—Poetry