Voices on the Corner

Harold J. Recinos is the son of a Guatemalan father and Puerto Rican mother who at age twelve was abandoned to New York City streets. After living on the streets between the ages of twelve and sixteen, Recinos met a Presbyterian minister who had discovered the God of the oppressed while active in civil rights marches in the 60s. The minister took Recinos into his family, helped him kick a heroin habit, and enrolled him in school. Voices on the Corner documents life at the edges of American society in ways that are both personal and universal in the human experience. The poems provide a fresh insight into the existential experiences of people excluded from mainstream society. In a celebration of dazzling texture, poems here address issues of police brutality, gun violence, immigrants' rights, the blighted urban landscape, death, hunger, religious violence, drug addiction, pluralism, spirituality, family life, hope, and the pulse of everyday life in overlooked places.