WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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It is the first Latino
Pura Belpré honor.

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I don't want to be quoted as
claiming the actual medal,

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but thank you so much.

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And I just want to
thank the Poetry

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Center and the foundation.

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This has been the most
amazing experience.

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I want to thank the schools
that are hosting me.

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The students today
at Davis Elementary

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were amazing they welcomed
me with a mariachi band,

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and tomorrow, I've heard that
some of the secondary students

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will arrive in costume.

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So this is really a creative
community, and it's exciting.

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Finding the poetry in history
is a process of exploration,

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and it seems to me
that over and over,

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no matter what I
set out to write,

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I end up discovering
things about myself

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as well as the subject
that I'm exploring.

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And I also find that I come
back to certain themes,

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in particular,
aspects of freedom.

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I could sit down to write a
book about search and rescue

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dogs, which I have done, and
somewhere in there, there'll

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be something about freedom.

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Whether social, emotional,
or spiritual, I always

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seem to explore that
theme and one of hope,

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and I think that these are
subjects that are universal.

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So even though all except for
the last of these verse novels

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are set in Cuba, I hope
that students here,

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for instance, in
Arizona that may not

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be very familiar
with Cuba will still

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find universal themes in
there despite the different

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geography.

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My connection to the history
of Latin America in general

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and Cuba in particular
is profoundly personal.

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My American father
traveled to the island

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after seeing National Geographic
photographs of my mother's

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hometown, Trinidad
de Cuba, which

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is on the south central coast.

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I won't tell you how
long ago, but they've

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been married 66 years.

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And even though they did
not speak the same language,

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they fell in love
at first sight.

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He arrived on Valentine's
Day, and as artists,

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they used sketches, passing
sketches back and forth to get

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to know each other, because they
didn't-- my father is American.

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He only knew English.

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My mother's Cuban.

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She only knew Spanish.

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I was born and raised in my
father's hometown, Los Angeles,

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California, but we spent summers
in Cuba as often as possible,

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where I developed a deep
bond with my extended family

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and also a lifelong passion
for tropical nature, which

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inspired me to go on to become
a botanist and agronomist.

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And I fell in love with the
mystery of the island's past.

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I was always curious
about everything

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having to do with
Cuba, which leads

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me to read history,
which in turn inspires

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me to write about history.

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During one of our summer visits
to Cuba when I was a child,

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diplomatic relations between the
island and the US broke down.

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That was in 1960, but after
the 1962 Missile Crisis,

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travel was completely forbidden.

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When I was a teenager, it was
easier for an American citizen

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to walk on the moon than
to visit relatives in Cuba.

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So one day, I had a
huge extended family,

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and the next day, my
abuelita and bisabuelita

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were as far out of reach as if
they were on a distant planet.

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But I always wondered about the
lives of my primos, my cousins,

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and I wondered what my own life
would have been like if we had

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settled in my mother's homeland
instead of my father's.

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And since this presentation
is not in Los Angeles,

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I will admit that I hated
growing up in Los Angeles,

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and I thought it was the worst
place in the world, which

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probably all
teenagers say, right?

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And I just like, why
can't we live in Cuba?

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Why do we have to live here?

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And I'm sure that my cousins
in Cuba were probably saying,

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oh wow, why can't we
live in Los Angeles?

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How come she's the only
one who gets to go there?

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So the grass is always
greener, but even today,

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after returning to the island
many times as an adult,

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I still feel a
sense of surrealism

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or, if we're going
to talk about Latin

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America, of magic realism.

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And that's why I choose
poetry, because I

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feel that it's a suitable
vessel for the complex personal,

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emotional riddles of history.

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I started writing
poetry as a young child

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and then went on to
study botany and agronomy

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and did a lot of
technical writing

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but never completely
gave up poetry.

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I just gave up showing my
poetry to other people,

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which I think is very
common for teenagers,

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but they're secretly
writing and learning

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and will eventually come out
and show it to people again.

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I think that my experience
with the timing of the Missile

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Crisis, which was
when I was 11, is

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one reason that I choose
to write for young readers

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and in particular for
preteens and teenagers,

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because I like the
difficult subjects.

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I don't want to avoid them.

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I want to explore them.

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It's part of my general
attitude of wanting to explore,

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and maybe that is from
my scientific background,

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that I do like to experiment.

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I want to face up to
these troubling situations

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and difficult
decisions, and I hope

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that the courage
and the kindness

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of real-life unknown
heroes from history, well,

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either unknown or forgotten,
that I write about

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will eventually help to inspire
some of the young readers

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as they struggle to
make their own hopeful

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decisions in situations
that might seem hopeless,

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whether it's a historical
situation or a personal one.

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