I opened All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, the
new collection of poems by Raúl
Sánchez, as a book of intimate, personal prayers. But the prevailing
Judeo-Christian theology is turned upside down in these poems. Here, the Earth
is sacred; Heaven is all around us; common gardeners, cooks, farmworkers are
brown and capable of performing miracles. Sánchez is a very wise poet, a shaman
of words, a soother, a healer, a teller of untold family stories. Images in
these poems may be stark, like “dogs on rooftops barking to the wind” in the
poem “Mexico City in Dali’s Eyes” but they are always effective in
communicating the poet’s compassionate view of the world. Raúl Sánchez is the
contemporary Nezahualcóyotl of the Northwest, who lives in damp Seattle, and as
he says, “I clean the moss off my shoes / fling the slugs off my porch,” and
has come out with wondrous poems in praise of life that ultimately are
liberating prayers for every day.

Mexican-American Raúl Sánchez raises his poetic voice in languages
twice removed from the indigenous language of his ancestors, but with well more
than double the fervor. Language is embodied in the essence of personal and
political struggle, as evidenced in these lines from the poem ”My Father Was a
Bracero”: “He didn’t want me to live / by my strong back, strong arms / but by
my words”. This ardent inaugural collection by Sánchez is filled with poems of
identity – cultural, familial and personal. All
Our Brown-Skinned Angels is part civil protest, part personal celebration,
completely impassioned.

Raúl writes from
experience and desire. He moves effortlessly between worlds and languages. Here
are poems about naming things, where one comes from, the politics of borders
and skin, work and working, and most importantly family. I admire his
directness and his belief in the power of the poem

My favorite parts are the references to the culture behind you and your ability to
express the Nahuatl words