At the age of twenty-four Archila returned to El Salvador with the hopes of reconnecting to the people, culture, and music of the place he saw as home.
[5] His disconnect was a direct result of both the aftermath of the Civil War and his long separation from his country because a lot had change culturally and physically since the last time he had lived there.
[4] After this discovery, Archila made the decision to share his work locally and he gained fame throughout the Latino community in Los Angeles, California.
Archila's realization of his potential as a poet came when he attended a literary workshop in the Japanese American Museum led by Garrett Hongo.
The poems in the Art of Exile, which are based on Archila's memory of both El Salvador and Los Angeles, focus on themes related to displacement and identity.
Through his poems Archila attempts to describe the process of being displaced from one's home country and the difficulty of finding one's identity due to the lack of connection with a specific culture and location.
Throughout his poems, Archila moves between the past and the present thereby giving insight into the physical and spiritual effects that the processes of displacement and exile have on one's life.
In a lyrical language, Archila's poems reveal his desire to gain peace with his feeling of exile and he does so by taking his readers on a journey to find these answers, which can only be found in the ground.