"cultivating something from the roots, tilling the soils of it": An Interview with Alan Chazaro

These Spaceships Weren’t Built For Us by Alan Chazaro | Red Hen Press / Tia Chucha Press / Letras Latinas | April 14th, 2026 | ISBN: 9781882688654

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Brent Ameneyro (BA): Alan, thank you for taking the time to chat with Letras Latinas about your new collection, These Spaceships Weren’t Built For Us. I’ve been following your work for a few years now, and it’s been a pleasure to witness your literary life unfold. I’ve heard many folks say the second full-length poetry collection is often more difficult than the first, both in craft and in finding a home. How has this experience been for you?

Alan Chazaro (AC): Saludos, and thanks for giving me space to talk about this book, and my writing. In my experience, the big “firsts” are often the most sincere, if not most intimate, in many ways: whether in music, film, poetry, sports. As artists, we work tremendously hard — often in unseen ways — to reach a certain level of craft, discipline, and execution. There’s an innate hunger and passion that goes into making a “first” for anything. A lot of care, attention, creativity, and hustle goes into that debut moment, by default. I think what sometimes happens is that when the initial goal is reached, and that first book is out, it’s kind of easy to ease off the gas and, naturally, recuperate and take some time off, or move on to some other challenge. Harnessing all of that energy again — the process, the grind, the same level of care and attention and creative ideation — can get more challenging, especially as we juggle the changes in other aspects of our lives as writers, as people. Poetry requires a lot of ongoing nourishment and internal work. It’s draining, in many ways. Finding fresh ways to feed it, to stimulate it in original ways — especially in the modern world of distractions — is fucking hard. So I totally agree that the second book can, perhaps, feel like a larger, heavier lift. 

Personally, this book took me about eight years from start to finish — from the moment I had the concept, to drafting it out, to sharing it with close friends, revising it, sending it out to publishers once it felt ready, and getting it picked up by Tia Chucha via Letras Latinas. In looking back, I’d say having a close community of other hungry and inspiring writers in the Bay Area, specifically, helped to create a sense of accountability and purpose for this project. There was a period when I would meet with friends after a long day of work teaching high schoolers in Oakland, and we’d pour up some drinks in someone’s living room, and then write, talk, connect. I don’t think I would’ve been able to really shape the core of this book in those early, uncertain stages if I didn’t have that community of readers, friends, and poets to receive it. So building that audience you trust is vital to keeping any work alive, especially when it comes to second, third, or fourth poetry collections. It isn’t, and shouldn't be, a completely solitary act.

"I don't think I would've been able to really shape the core of this book in those early, uncertain stages if I didn't have that community of readers, friends, and poets to receive it."

BA: There’s a lot of hip-hop in cars and basketball in this collection, as well a strong sense of place, naming specific bay area cities and rappers. Your work has an American voice, for sure. Even the inclusion of space and the cosmos feels like an American theme, especially when presented as this race toward an abstract form of greatness. In “On the Way to Ojai,” you write, “I don’t mean to be so American, / but I am.” I’m sure for you now, as a dual citizen living in Mexico, this “Americanness” must have complicated feelings associated with it. Perhaps a longing for your Bay Area community, perhaps a breath of relief to be away from the perpetual pursuit of progress inherent in American culture. In “Space can be interesting without being an astronaut,” you write, “ I wonder what sound is made when our ambition / punctures the stratosphere.” Not every Mexican-American has the same story, and yours is definitely evolving in a unique way. How does your individual Mexican-American identity/journey influence your approach to poetry? And maybe you can also give us a glimpse into your writing practice, what that looked like in the bay compared to now as a father living in Mexico. Call this the space for you to say, “allow me to reintroduce myself.”

AC: I always like to say that my biggest privilege in life is being Mexican-American. For as long as I can remember, my parents have fostered a connection within me and my siblings to not just Mexico as a theoretical place, but in actuality, by physically taking us there often, and making sure we were rooted in what it means to have a second home. We had the ability, thankfully, to travel back to Veracruz — where my parents immigrated from — every few years. In essence, I had access to U.S. citizenship, education, habits, financial pathways, and more, while also being able to develop an appreciation for life outside of the U.S.: seeing the rawness, humor, humility and beauty of Mexico, not from a touristic perspective and going to beach resorts, but from spending months inside of the homes of family members and seeing life in an unfiltered way on this side of the imperialistic border. In 2024, I finally decided, after years of planning and visiting and traveling all over Mexico throughout my life, to leave my California life behind and invest in a home and lifestyle in my parents’ hometown of Xalapa, Veracruz. I live here now with my wife and son, and I regularly see my mom, abuelo, tias, tios, primos, primas, and other Mexican friends I’ve made along the way, in a city that is very much off the radar for international travelers so, in that sense, reflects a real side of Mexican life. I still am hella American of course (in the U.S. sense), and that part of me will never change, nor should it. I had to grow up independently in the U.S., and nobody held my hand. In contrast, Mexico is very family-oriented, and many of my family members still live with their parents or are given money by their grandparents to pay their rent and bills. I never had that in my life, so my work ethic and discipline to get shit done has developed with a certain rigor that I’m proud of, and I’m not sure I would’ve known as much growing up in a middle class family in Mexico, where many are able to rely on a tight-knit network of support from family. It’s beautiful to see. But I take pride in being me and being the sort of aberration among my family in Mexico — the primo who comes and goes and speaks Spanish with an accent and listens to underground rap and wears Crocs to family events. I want my poetry to reflect that schism, of being in one place physically while existing in other places spiritually, mentally, artistically. I don’t see it as a setback or challenge; I actually feel blessed that I can move through worlds in ways that so many people can’t, for various reasons — some political, some personal, some economic. It’s the ultimate blessing and I don’t ever take it lightly. 

"I want my poetry to reflect that schism, of being in one place physically while existing in other places spiritually, mentally, artistically."

BA: Your poems have a masculine quality to them; they are no doubt written by a Latino man. I mean that in a good way, that you have a clear grasp of who you are, both your personal identity and poetic voice. I first think of the term Chicano, but I know you often use the term “Pocho Boy.” In my copy of Piñata Theory that I received from you a few years ago, you wrote a personalized inscription that included the following sentence: “It means more than anything else to share these words—our words—with other men, especially raza.” I think poetry is for everyone, and reading diverse voices, voices different from our own, is a big part of the magic in the experience of reading poetry. But I also think there’s something special—as you’ve pointed out in the inscription you wrote to me—about kinship, about seeing something close to our own experiences echoed in the halls of literature. In the larger narrative of your work, I can see the process of deconstructing an inherited masculinity followed by reconstructing it with care, precision, and confidence. Can you touch on this idea of masculinity in poetry, particularly within the context of the 21st century? 

AC: Both of my parents immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 70s and 80s. After I was born, my parents divorced, and I have no memory of ever living in a house with my mom after that. In an uncommon outcome, the court ruled that my dad would be the primary caretaker for me and my older brother, so I essentially grew up in a predominantly male environment, especially since my dad never remarried. Sports, boxing, video games, wrestling, graffiti, shenanigans with no supervision, BMXing, and just straight up reckless activities with the other boys in our neighborhood was pretty much my reality everyday until I moved out of my dad’s house as a teenager. It’s not a traditional way to grow up as a Latino kid — without a strong maternal figure or without that traditional kind of family ecosystem. But that’s what most shaped me, and I’m grateful for it.

Within the context of poetry, in my personal experience, I don’t always come across too many other Latino dudes with a similar experience — where we learned how to box in a backyard against other neighborhood kids before we were invited to read, or write, poems — so whenever I do, I naturally feel a sense of kinship. We exist, but we’re far from the majority in institutional spaces. I’ve been in so many classrooms, workshops, libraries, retreats, and all of that kind of stuff, and unless it’s specifically designated for Latine or diverse voices, I’m almost always the only male Latino from my generation, if not one of the absolute few. I have learned how to adapt to those environments where I’m the only one wearing my fitted Oakland A’s hat, or the only one who might list a rapper like Vince Staples as one of my creative influences. So whenever I’m in a creative environment where I see another person who openly shares having a similar journey, it feels affirming. It’s a reminder that we are in the right place. That we, too, deserve the tenderness and the softness of what poems can offer us. That we, despite countless reasons that might otherwise try to prevent us from becoming poets, are needed in these spaces. I strive to do it in a way that I hope welcomes beauty and diversity and understanding, while honoring all of the other backgrounds and identities that are called into poetry and, I always love to learn from those different experiences, too.

BA: Speaking of kinship and community, your work, in many ways, is a chorus of voices. From the paleteros who “will be the most luminous gods we’ve known,” to the DACA dreamer who “Will Be the First Person to Build a Do-It-Yourself Spaceship from Simple Materials,” I see a trend of uplifting those who have been silenced, disrespected, or disenfranchised. In “At the End of the World, All the Homies Pull Up to an Abandoned Gas Station in Alameda to Watch the Last Corpse Flower Bloom,” you write: “This isn’t a testimony— / it’s an invitation toward more. Because I don’t want / what they’ve historically offered. Historically / nothing has been offered.” How do you write toward this offering? Why is it important for you to stretch beyond the personal and into the communal? 

AC: Many of my closest friends, classmates and neighbors growing up were undocumented, or the children of immigrants who didn’t speak English. And many were from all over the world, not just Mexico or Latin America. When you grow up around that kind of environment, you learn about solidarity, about interconnected struggles, about community mobilization early on. This was before the internet and social media. You really had to be outside, attending protests, spray painting shit, hopping fences, kicking it at someone’s house until 3 a.m. talking about what can be done, digging through bookstores and record shops. You had to be in literal, physical community. It’s easy nowadays to adopt anything through the internet. There’s a certain beauty to that, no doubt. But really cultivating something from the roots, tilling the soils of it, not just for yourself, but for others, over many years, is a feeling that I’ve always enjoyed as a Bay Area kid, and again, I feel hella fortunate it’s something that I was born into and picked up early on in my life. I wouldn’t be who I am without those friends, the parents of my friends, the teachers, the other graffiti writers, the older neighborhood kids, my brother, my cousins, all of it — on both sides of the border. Every part of me is a small reflection of those fragments, and I’m a weird result of everything I was taught about in those formative stages of my upbringing. The only difference, I think, is that I had certain privileges that not all of my friends along the way have had — having a financially reliable father, having U.S. citizenship, those sorts of major life supports and pathways. I think the day I realized that I’m lucky to have those things in my life, when I was in community college, is also the day that I decided I wanted to write about it all, and had no excuse to not succeed. That’s really when things clicked for me as a writer and when I started to develop a vision for what I wanted to achieve — and for who.

BA: Because there are so many references to basketball in this collection, I want to ask you the same question I asked Anthony Cody in an interview. If poetry was like the NBA with a focus on East versus West, and you were captain of the West, who would you nominate to “play” alongside you?

AC: Damn, hella hard! In no particular order, the writers poets and writers who come to mind as influential West Coasters who I would want to go to run pick up with are: Luis Rodriguez, Michael Torres, Sara Borjas, Brynn Saito, Joseph Rios, and D.A. Powell as my sixth man to light it up off the bench. Each of those writers has either been a direct mentor of mine, or a mentor from afar through their own experiences and work, who have really become a part of my own DNA as a poet. I could give a position breakdown based on height and skills but I’ll save that for a future conversation about which poets would make the best hoopers and why we need a league for that.

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Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) and Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and was selected as a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow at the University of San Francisco. A former high school teacher, he was raised by Mexican immigrants in the Bay Area and writes about the world. His work can be found in NPR, The Guardian, SLAM, GQ, L.A. Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Eater and more.

Brent Ameneyro is the author of the collection A Face Out of Clay (The Center for Literary Publishing, 2024), winner of the 2025 NIEA Juror's Choice Award. He was a Letras Latinas Poetry Coalition Fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, a Poets & Writers Get The Word Out Fellow, and a recipient of SDSU’s Research Award for Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice. He currently serves as an associate at Letras Latinas and as the poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review.