Editor’s Note: Lupe Mendez, poetry editor of the Texas Observer, is author of the new book We Exist in the Whisper: Huelga School Verses (Arte Público Press, 2026)–one of the first works to tackle Houston’s 1970s huelga school movement. Mendez’s moving mélange of poetry, interviews, and journal entries describes a citywide strike, during which Mexican-American students and parents protested the district’s attempt to skirt integration by classifying them as white. Mendez calls this book an attempt to “sit with the movement.” Excerpts reprinted by permission of Arte Público Press.
