A Conversation with Juan J. Morales

Institute for Latino Studies

Available on-demand

Immerse yourself in a deeply moving oral history interview with poet Juan J. Morales, hosted by Notre Dame graduate Misael Osorio-Conde ’21 MFA. Together, they explore heritage, memory, and artistic craft as lived experiences across borders transformed into poignant verse. Let them guide you through personal grief, ecological responsibility, and unexpected humor while providing the essential inspiration needed to articulate your own authentic cultural narrative with profound literary resonance.

Morales and fellow Puerto Rican poet Blas Falconer in-residence at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art in late October 2026, spending time in the permanent collection observing, reflecting, and writing new ekphrastic poetry inspired by an artwork on display as a part of “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a multi-year partnership between the Museum and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS).

For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

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In an illuminating discussion hosted by the Institute for Latino Studies, interviewer Misael Osorio-Conde ’21 MFA engages poet and educator Juan Morales on artistic craft, migratory roots, and pedagogy. Born in Iowa City during his father’s military assignment, Juan Morales grew up as a first-generation student and military dependent near Colorado Springs. Raised by a Puerto Rican father and Ecuadorian mother, his upbringing required relocating every few years, cultivating a fluid sense of self. Formative travels at age fourteen—first to Puerto Rico for his grandfather’s funeral, where language barriers earned him the affectionate nickname guandulito, and subsequently to Quito, Ecuador, meeting extended family—expanded his global consciousness and humbled his perspective regarding American privilege.

Morales’s academic journey began at the University of Southern Colorado (now Cal State University Pueblo), where he earned his Bachelor’s degree before completing his MFA at the University of New Mexico at age twenty-two. Early experiences fronting a high school ska/punk band taught him collaborative lyricism and how to strip sentimentality from his writing. Stepping into the university classroom as a young instructor in an ill-fitting suit, he realized authentic teaching requires self-acceptance rather than rigid posturing. His pedagogical philosophy inherited a unique teaching lineage from his father—a military sergeant who once flushed a confiscated bag of marijuana to teach soldiers about financial waste rather than invoking punitive discipline, modeling empathetic leadership over rigid authority.

Family history serves as primary source material for Morales’s craft. Driven by temporal urgency as his parents aged, he transcribed their late-night disclosures into compressed, performative verse. Crucially, both parents harbored severe trauma: his father suffered from military PTSD, while his mother survived a cataclysmic earthquake in Ecuador at age ten. Transforming these oral accounts into literature became an act of ancestral gratitude. His artistic influences synthesize canonical awareness with diverse voices like Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Brian Turner, Major Jackson, and Rigoberto González, alongside Carolyn Forché’s poetry of witness and Gabriel García Márquez’s matter-of-fact brick-faced storytelling.

These frameworks illuminate his major collections. The Siren World balances island and mountain geographies while enduring ninety-two publisher rejections, featuring the poem “What I Said One Time When a Woman Called Me Jose” to address cultural stereotyping through humor. Handyman’s Guide to the End of Times merges horror tropes, zombies, and home repair metaphors to explore marital grief and environmental stewardship; poems such as “Turf Wars” and “Across the Overrun States” advocate for community compassion over survivalist isolation. In Friday in the Year that Followed, Morales investigates spirituality and ancestral legacy, anchored by “How My Father Learned English,” which chronicles his bedridden father learning English word-by-word alongside wounded non-English speaking soldiers at the 382nd Hospital in Japan in 1952. Ultimately, Morales frames poetry as an essential instrument for civic advocacy, community healing, and ethical citizenship.

How does a migratory or multicultural upbringing influence an artist’s understanding of identity?
A migratory upbringing across distinct geographical and cultural environments fosters a dynamic, fluid view of heritage rather than a static one. Exposure to foreign family roots and language barriers creates an early awareness of global perspective, personal privilege, and cultural complexity. Rather than viewing non-dominant backgrounds as isolating, artists can utilize these intersecting influences as rich source material that combines personal memory, imagination, and lived history.
What role does family history play in the creation of authentic poetry?
Family history serves as an urgent primary source for creative documentation, particularly when recording the lived experiences of aging relatives who have endured historical trauma, military service, or natural disasters. Capturing these oral narratives in performative, compressed verse functions as both an act of ancestral gratitude and historical preservation. Transforming personal anecdotes into literary craft ensures that vulnerable oral traditions are permanently archived before they are lost over time.
How can pop culture, humor, and genre tropes enhance serious literary themes?
Integrating unconventional elements such as horror tropes, pop culture references, and humor into poetry renders complex personal and political subjects accessible to broad audiences. Disarming readers through comedic situations or apocalyptic framing allows writers to tackle heavy themes—including marital grief, social stereotyping, and environmental degradation—without descending into preachiness or sentimentality. These stylistic entry points foster engagement while inviting deeper ethical reflection.
Why is the poetry of witness essential for environmental and community advocacy?
The poetry of witness connects individual subjective experiences with broader socio-political and ecological realities. By documenting everyday environmental decay and societal friction, literature acts as a catalyst for civic responsibility, empathy, and active stewardship. Rather than promoting survivalist individualism or competitive isolation, witness-oriented poetics emphasize mutual survival, community building, and restorative action toward both society and the natural environment.
What teaching strategies foster authentic student engagement in literary education?
Effective creative and literary pedagogy relies on educator transparency and self-acceptance rather than rigid authoritarian posturing. Reminding students of the universal presence of culture in their own backgrounds helps demystify craft and build inclusive learning spaces. Furthermore, instilling resilience by framing editorial rejection as an inescapable, productive phase of artistic growth encourages emerging writers to maintain long-term persistence and creative integrity.

“And it’s a part of me the same way that my two feet are a part of me as well and it’s not an identity that it’s fixed it’s always moving it’s always changing in traveling meeting that magic aspect.” – Juan Morales
“Being in a place at a university or just or just having writing as a platform to share my culture provides other people opportunities as well.” – Juan Morales
“You have the performative elements and then you also have like the the economy of language that’s kind of celebrated with poetry and I think it’s a great challenge to kind of say, “Okay how can I how can I express that emotion in that in that that moment in two stanzas instead of two paragraphs, or two pages, or twenty pages for that matter?” – Juan Morales
“Because for all the good that is in the world that is poetry it also is the job of the poet to be an activist and also to kind of connect communities, stand up for communities.” – Juan Morales
“It does take hard work to get published. It does take hard work to in determination and persistence to to get three rejections from a literary mouth from three different literary magazines in one week and then and then feel hopeful enough to send those poems back out two days later.” – Juan Morales