We Still Be: Poems and Performances

Winner of the American Book Award in 2024, WE STILL BE: Poems and Performances is the long-awaited full-length debut of poems by the nationally-celebrated, award-winning spoken word artist, playwright, and educator Paul S. Flores. WE STILL BE: Poems and Performances is a collection that masterfully weaves together political and personal testimonies. Flores speaks to issues of gentrification, mixed Latino identity, masculinity, machismo, incarceration, systemic racism, racial unity, fatherhood, and more.

"Paul S. Flores unlocks the hot key, the people's voice, and the Spanglish ritmoRhythm on how to write our story. He swags us into the soul and soulfulness of our life-chapters and our plight in the USA. It is a personal mambo, a face-to-face truth riffin' us into a "Spanglish mandala of hope," at last. We never again will ask ourselves "Who am I?" "Who are we?" Flores is not afraid to speak of his wounds of familia-yes, he is intimate, he is loving. He escorts us through the Bay Area, land of poets, artists, musicians, and muralists-he is part of that, he is all that-and we will be as we enter this world. Don't forget: Huey Newton, Lolita Lebrón, and José Feliciano in this salsa history bowl that will light you up all the way to feverish happiness. Flores is a master weaver, with a blazing kaleidoscopic lamp that reveals and embodies our lives. No book like this one in the last 50 years."
--Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, Emeritus, winner of the Ruth Lily Prize, 2022, and Robert Frost Lifetime Achievement Medal, 2023
"Poetry evangelist" Paul S. Flores testifies to the importance of language, representation and equity, the hypocrisy of sham systems, and his personal journey to redefine masculinity with a responsibility to the younger generations. Flores stakes his claim in Bay Area poetics writing with true intimacy, vulnerability, and radical love for his community. WE STILL BE is part memoir, part call to action, and part cultural celebration. It is a declaration of hope that we will all win, that men can be trusted, and that San Francisco's poetic heartbeat is still something worth believing in. --Amalia Ortiz, HBO Def Poet and American Book Award Winner. Author of Rant. Chant. Chisme. and The Canción Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs