"Poet and novelist, activist and radio personality, Villatoro writes poetry steeped in formalism, free verse, and his own Salvadoran syntax. This new collection is a memoir-in-poems telling how the world appears to a Latin American immigrant. His sense of humanity is intact. He has a family, a job, a life in the States. But the face of the Mayan hero Tekun Uman hangs in his office, and he has "made clear all political positions by standing behind the wooden mask of a dead man."" "Villatoro offers a primer on how to integrate a history of brutality and injustice with the privilege and comfort of life in America. A final section of poems is presented in Spanish only - a statement of ascendance, a strategy for identity preservation, a gift to the cognoscenti."--BOOK JACKET.