Juan Felipe Herrera: Hello there. My name is Juan Felipe Herrera. You have to roll the R's. Herrera. My first name, Juan, comes from my grandmother's name, Juanita. My grandmother, who came from Mexico City, a small little barrio, and with my mother and my aunt, Leila, they jumped on a train and came up north during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to Juarez, and then crossed over to El Paso, Texas.

My father, Felipe, is the one who gave me my middle name, Felipe, and of course, Herrera, his last name. He had already crossed the border into the United States as a child when he was 14 in the late 1800's, so you can imagine the crossing and the land in those early, early days before and during and after the Mexican Revolution, and I guess all that is braided in my name, Juan Felipe Herrera.