Book Description

Journey to Aztlan is the powerful, inspirational, and heartwarming story about how one man overcame life-threatening Depression and found love. Juan Blea was ready to end his life. Depression had claimed his soul and left him seeing few options for his life. Developing through the veils of cultural confusion as a child and identity loss as a young adult, depression proved to be an enemy almost too strong to conquer. However, as a child he learned the power of language and he used that knowledge to reclaim his life and became a writer. Writing proved to be the path for Juan to find the source of all that s good and strong and beautiful. Juan calls this source, Aztlan, and it was through his Aztlan that he found love. In Journey to Aztlan, Juan shares his journey and provides insight into how we all can find our own source of strength, goodness, and beauty. Praise for Journey to Aztlan. . . Blea, in his maroma / somersault chronicles (Journey to Aztlan), takes us through the fractured visions of a man in search of his soul, his multicolored darkness. And we in turn notice the colliding identities of a son, a father, a lover in search of his homeland, a source of poetry, music, and computer ciphers yearning intimacy and oneness. I enjoyed this book for its daring and shifting psychological optics. And its Chicano spice I recognized many scenes, conflicts, parables, and even Jimmy Santiago Baca in cameo. What a book! Juan Felipe Herrera Poet Laureate of California. Juan Blea is an amazing man with deep insight into how to heal the millions & millions of men and women who suffer from addiction and depression. I love Juan s way of looking at mental illness; he s compassionate and brilliant and passionate. He s an amazing Aztlan curandero that the barrio has given us as a gift and Journey to Aztlan stands toe to toe with anything in print. Jimmy Santiago Baca Author of A Place to Stand, winner of the Pushcart Prize and American Book Award.