Artistic Excellence at its Finest

The fire lights up faces, warms the shadows.
The migrants shiver, cups in hand
like little hearth-fires of water,
sugar candle lights for the journey.

- from "The Patron Saints," by Balam Rodrigo, translated by Dan Bellm

When Gerson Morales Perez, '16 BA, '21 MA Spanish, immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala at age 11, he couldn't have predicted that years later, he'd be onstage at the Hammer Theatre in San José, reading a poem he'd translated by celebrated Mexican poet Balam Rodrigo. Dressed in a suit and surrounded by fellow graduate students, Associate Professor of World Languages and Literatures Cheyla Samuelson, translator Dan Bellm, Philosophy Professor Carlos Sanchez, and the poet himself, Morales Perez faced the Hammer crowd and read in a clear, confident tone.

The poem he translated began with a series of geographic coordinates that corresponded with the location of a Central American body found along the migrant caravan.

"This is the origin of the recent history of a place called Mexico," Morales Perez recited as Rodrigo observed from his seat stage left. The poem, one of many in "The Central American Book of the Dead," gave voice to Central American migrants and refugees who had braved challenging terrain, violence and crime en route to better lives in the north.

Morales Perez learned of the opportunity to work with Rodrigo's poetry through a course on Central American history and literature at San José State in the Department of World Languages and Literature. Supported by an Artistic Excellence Programming grant in the College of Humanities and the Arts, Samuelson invited the poet to visit SJSU, lead writing workshops with SJSU students, and perform his work in Spanish on the Hammer stage. The curriculum, paired with the chance to meet the Mexican artist in person, transformed Morales Perez's career.

"Being Central American here in the U.S., we're in the shadows," says Morales Perez, who is one year shy of completing his PhD in Spanish at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "When I was an undergraduate, there were barely any classes that covered literature or cultures of Central America. So when we were offered a whole course on Central American migration, I realized I could really dig into it. That project later became the third chapter in my dissertation."

Rodrigo's work spoke to Morales Perez in part because of his own story of migration. In the 1990s, Morales Perez's parents moved to the U.S., and he later moved as an unaccompanied minor. Energized by the prospect of working with a contemporary Spanish speaking poet, Morales Perez collaborated with Samuelson to plan additional activities to engage the greater San José community, including sharing Rodrigo's work with Central American students at Ace Charter High School.

"When I was a high school student, and even as an undergrad, I didn't see [my culture] represented," he says. "I wanted those Central American students to see themselves."

Morales Perez's experience translating Rodrigo's poetry offered insight into his own identity, both as a Guatemalan-born American and as an academic. His experience in Samuelson's course inspired him to apply to doctoral programs, where he continued to study Central American and Mexican artists whose work centers on migration and exile.

"Gerson's story is a wonderful example of how programing funding by the College of Humanities and Arts at San José State University can give students a sense of belonging and the experience and skills to encourage big dreams," says Samuelson. "Gerson himself is one of the finest students I have ever had the pleasure of teaching, and a truly special person with a deep sense of responsibility, tenacity and curiosity that carried his work beyond the boundaries of given expectations.

"His dedication to our project was a big part of its success, as he worked to make contact with a local school and with the Central American community to bring them into the experience at the Hammer 4, where over 110 people attended the public event with Balam and the students. Gerson's own work as a translator was outstanding, as he brought his own cultural knowledge to the work of understanding the poems, and then brought them into English beautifully, in a fearless gesture that retained all the raw power of the original. Supporting him on his journey to the Ph.D. has been an honor, and I look forward to seeing his career unfolding after he finishes his degree."

Thanks to graduate school funding, Morales Perez traveled to Mexico to retrace the steps of many migrants alongside Rodrigo. He's expanded his research to include performance artists from Guatemala and other practitioners from across the continent - all connections he might not have made without Samuelson's course.

"Programs like AEPG make a huge impact," he says. "If you think about how an experience [like the migration course] can change one person, and then that person spreads the impact. If you plant a seed, it spreads."

Morales Perez's parents have never read his work on the page; his father never learned to read, and his mother has a second grade education. They see in him the seed they planted.

"I feel privileged and lucky that I got to do all this," he says. "My parents have always pushed me in school, because in their mind, as immigrants in this country, the one thing they can't take away from you is education."

Since this initiative began in 2018, it's grown into a college-wide initiative, H&A in Action, that focuses on melding teaching, research and public programming to involve students and our surrounding San José community. (Read more about What We Do and our definition of public engagement .) This rich history of public engagement is evident in our Stories of Engagement as well as our past AEPG events .