{"id":121199,"date":"2018-02-05T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=121199"},"modified":"2018-02-07T17:19:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T22:19:47","slug":"daca-poet-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Marcello Hernandez Castillo<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

On any given day, the county jail in Marysville, California, holds about 170\u00a0immigrant detainees<\/a> awaiting hearings. Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have an office nearby, the inmates will be shown via Televideo to one of the three judges of San Francisco\u2019s immigration court. After their hearings, 90\u00a0percent<\/a> of those inmates will be put on a green bus and taken to an ICE<\/small> detention center for deportation.<\/strong> The Marysville jail is just one of the nearly two\u00a0hundred jails<\/a> where ICE<\/small> held contracts last year. It also happens to be just a few blocks away from the home of Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA<\/small> recipient and poet who recently moved back to Marysville to be near his mother.<\/p>\n

Castillo\u2019s debut poetry collection,\u00a0Cenzontle<\/em>, will be published in April. It has been nearly\u00a0four years since Castillo became a legal resident, after marrying his longtime girlfriend. But when the Department of Homeland Security bus rolls up to the jail on Friday mornings, Castillo feels a familiar paranoia. \u201cSome people think the border just exists along the southern part of the United States, but it\u2019s like a panopticon,\u201d Castillo says. \u201cTheir omnipresence\u2014that ICE<\/small> can be anywhere\u2014is what most attacks the psyche of undocumented people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo\u2019s family came to the United States when he was five years old. For twenty years, the poet lived in a state of hyperawareness, as if he were a prisoner in Bentham\u2019s circular jail, trying to avoid the all-seeing enforcement agency at its center. \u201cYour self is first and foremost dictated by your undocumented status,\u201d Castillo tells me. \u201cNobody knows that you have to filter your experiences with: Can I do this or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo was excluded from the mundane privileges that documented Americans take for granted. When the local public library began requiring Social Security numbers, Castillo could no longer borrow books. When driving, Castillo strictly adhered to speeding laws. He would drive his brown Ford Taurus sedan, chosen for its discreteness, at exactly sixty-seven\u00a0miles per hour when the highway speed limit was sixty-five, because \u201csixty-four\u00a0would\u2019ve drawn too much attention to myself,\u201d he says. \u00a0(More than once, he tells me, he almost got into a car accident because he was looking at the speedometer rather than the road.) While studying for his M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Michigan, he could not work as a teaching fellow or grading position to earn his scholarship, as most M.F.A. candidates do, because he didn\u2019t have work authorization.<\/p>\n

Constant hypervigilance made it difficult for Castillo to develop a stable sense of identity\u2014so much so that for many years the poet avoided writing from a first-person perspective. \u201cMy poetry doesn\u2019t exist anywhere,\u201d Castillo says of the poems in Cenzontle<\/em>, which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize in 2017. \u201cMy readers have such a difficult time placing them\u00a0in time and space. There\u2019s no body attached to them. No attachment to the real world. This literally comes from this anxiety I had that I didn\u2019t want to say too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2012, President Obama announced his DACA<\/small> executive action. That fall, Castillo began studying at Michigan\u2019s Ann Arbor campus and was therefore eligible for the temporary relief. It was there in Ann Arbor, far away from the California county he had grown up in, that Castillo decided to come out as undocumented. The admission was hard for him; he had kept his undocumented status secret for so many years. He had not even dared to discuss it with his extended family. \u201cThe words had never taken shape in my mouth,\u201d Castillo says of that moment. \u201cIt felt like I was looking at myself while saying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Receiving DACA<\/small> provided Castillo relief. The benefits were evident: the poet received his first government-issued ID, he could work for the university as a teaching assistant, and he was able to openly discuss his life with peers. It also emboldened Castillo and others to launch the advocacy group Undocupoets<\/a>, which, in 2015, led prominent poetry contests, like those run by the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation<\/a>, to remove American citizenship as an entrance requirement. This work has enabled the forthcoming publication of his own first collection by BOA Editions. (Northwestern University Press will also publish a selection of the poems in Cenzontle <\/em>in April, in a chapbook called Dulce<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

And yet, twenty years of undocumented life still haunts Castillo, especially in his poetry. Many of the poems in Cenzontle<\/em> were completed after Castillo received DACA<\/small> status and later a green card, and yet they manifest the confusion and dislocation he experienced while living undocumented.\u00a0 \u201cA very foundational part of me was in that mode,\u201d Castillo says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the poet I became. It wasn\u2019t on purpose, but when I realized it and tried to change, it was too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo crafts evocative scenes that draw readers in, but then, after a section break or sometimes even a line break, the focus changes. Readers are thrown into a new scene, equally compelling but seemingly unrelated. This juxtaposition prevents Castillo\u2019s work from offering the comfort of logic or predictability. Instead, they twist away from you:<\/p>\n

After the first boy called me a wetback,
\nI opened his mouth and fed him a spoonful of honey.<\/p>\n

I like the way you say \u201choney,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I made him a necklace out of the bees that have died in my yard.<\/p>\n

How good it must have felt before the small village
\nechoed its grief in his throat, before the sirens began ringing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Several of his poems evince a frustrated desire to be able to tell a life story and be understood. Describing the men of his family who share his given name, Castillo writes: \u201cAnd all of us in one suitcase that hasn\u2019t been opened. \/ I haven\u2019t been opened.\u201d Other, more abstract poems show the distance between the language of documented Americans and that of undocumented ones. In a poem titled \u201cImmigration Interview with Jay Leno,\u201d a stern interviewer asks immigration questions such as \u201chow long do you plan on staying here?\u201d To this, the immigrant responds, \u201cWe would have drowned \/ even without our laughter.\u201d The effect is jarring:<\/p>\n

Is that really your name?
\n<\/em>Yes, the clothes on the floor
\nblossomed like the orchards in spring.<\/p>\n

Have you been here before?
\n<\/em>There was a man who knew the way.
\nI put his fingers in my mouth
\nwhen he pointed in the direction of the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his personal life, Castillo is still attempting to negotiate the chasms of communication that his poetry explores. He is currently at work on a memoir for HarperCollins, but he has found writing his life story in a narrative fashion difficult. Even though he no longer faces legal ramifications, it seems as if the necessary avoidance of his truth most of his life has made him fearful of telling it to this day.<\/p>\n

In the collection, which takes its title from the Spanish word for birdsong<\/em>, to sing of one\u2019s undocumented life is to risk being consumed by it: \u201cThe song becoming \/ the bird becoming \/ the song,\u201d the poet writes. \u201cThe bird unraveled its song and became undone.\u201d And yet, in the collection\u2019s first poem, the desire to tell the story is also inescapable:<\/p>\n

Call it wound<\/em>\u2014
\ncall it beginning<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n

The bird\u2019s beak twisted
\ninto a small circle of awe.<\/p>\n

You called it cutting apart,
\nI called it song.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

DACA<\/small> and permanent residency have given Castillo the ability to speak openly, but he still has bouts of depression and anxiety and has sought mental-health treatment to help him adjust to his new residency status. Last year, when he could not afford therapy, he began jogging through Marysville to ease his anxiety.<\/p>\n

One early Friday morning, while out on a run, he came to an intersection and checked his surroundings. There, midblock, he saw a white bus with darkened windows parked near an entrance to the Yuba County Jail. Curious, he jogged by the bus to check it out. He saw a navy blue Department of Homeland Security logo. The old anxiety flooded back. He considered if he should wait around, try to speak to an immigrant being taken onto the bus, so that he could tell his or her family what had happened. But he also did not want to be a voyeur\u2014to, as he told me, \u201cpartake in the spectacle of bodies being hauled away.\u201d He ran a lap around the block, and another, and on his final lap the bus was gone. He did not see anyone being led from the jail to the bus, but he knew what had happened. He felt like the intense worry that characterized his undocumented life was justified. In that moment, it felt like ICE<\/small> really was everywhere. He has not gone for a run early on a Friday morning since.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tara<\/span> Wanda Merrigan is a freelance writer living in New York.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  On any given day, the county jail in Marysville, California, holds about 170\u00a0immigrant detainees awaiting hearings. Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have an office nearby, the inmates will be shown via Televideo to one of the three judges of San Francisco\u2019s immigration court. After their hearings, 90\u00a0percent of those inmates will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[32826,32824,30972,16879,32825,32823,16805],"class_list":["post-121199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-boa-editions","tag-cenzontle","tag-daca","tag-ice","tag-marcelo-hernandez-castillo","tag-undocupoets","tag-university-of-michigan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA DACA Poet Speaks Out<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA recipient, will have his first book of poetry published in April.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A DACA Poet Speaks Out by Tara Wanda Merrigan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 5, 2018 \u2013   On any given day, the county jail in Marysville, California, holds about 170\u00a0immigrant detainees awaiting hearings. Because Immigration and Customs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"844\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tara Wanda Merrigan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tara Wanda Merrigan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Tara Wanda Merrigan\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7eab615e4d2d123bb702ce10b747be04\"},\"headline\":\"A DACA Poet Speaks Out\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\"},\"wordCount\":1523,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"BOA Editions\",\"Cenzontle\",\"DACA\",\"ice\",\"Marcelo Hernandez Castillo\",\"Undocupoets\",\"University of Michigan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\",\"name\":\"A DACA Poet Speaks Out\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00\",\"description\":\"Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA recipient, will have his first book of poetry published in April.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A DACA Poet Speaks Out\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7eab615e4d2d123bb702ce10b747be04\",\"name\":\"Tara Wanda Merrigan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fa640e847e01a004a1ff81b4531dc9ad24866f3d946fe63abffa052ee3e6d629?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fa640e847e01a004a1ff81b4531dc9ad24866f3d946fe63abffa052ee3e6d629?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Tara Wanda Merrigan\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/tmerrigan\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out","description":"Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA recipient, will have his first book of poetry published in April.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out by Tara Wanda Merrigan","og_description":"February 5, 2018 \u2013   On any given day, the county jail in Marysville, California, holds about 170\u00a0immigrant detainees awaiting hearings. Because Immigration and Customs","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00","og_image":[{"width":800,"height":844,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Tara Wanda Merrigan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Tara Wanda Merrigan","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/"},"author":{"name":"Tara Wanda Merrigan","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7eab615e4d2d123bb702ce10b747be04"},"headline":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out","datePublished":"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00","dateModified":"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/"},"wordCount":1523,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg","keywords":["BOA Editions","Cenzontle","DACA","ice","Marcelo Hernandez Castillo","Undocupoets","University of Michigan"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/","name":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg","datePublished":"2018-02-05T16:00:50+00:00","dateModified":"2018-02-07T22:19:47+00:00","description":"Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA recipient, will have his first book of poetry published in April.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/marcello-castillo.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/daca-poet-speaks\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A DACA Poet Speaks Out"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7eab615e4d2d123bb702ce10b747be04","name":"Tara Wanda Merrigan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fa640e847e01a004a1ff81b4531dc9ad24866f3d946fe63abffa052ee3e6d629?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fa640e847e01a004a1ff81b4531dc9ad24866f3d946fe63abffa052ee3e6d629?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Tara Wanda Merrigan"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/tmerrigan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121199"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121227,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121199\/revisions\/121227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}