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Not going to read very many
poems today from this book.

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"Counted lines of sorrow for
a sonnet, rapidly-rhymed beats

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of fury, my own verses soon
flow, shrieking and groaning

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from my smuggled pen.

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I walk with empty hands,
letting the rhythm of footsteps

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turn into silence or birdsong.

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I never know which to expect.

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Time and distance vanish.

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I feel lopsided, like a tree
that reaches toward sunlight,

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rising from a rooted forest
of hurried, buried truce.

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I feel the mysterious
power of growth."

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That's in Tula's voice,
Avianela's voice,

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but as I imagined
from what she wrote

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about her experience of trying
different forms of poetry.

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My most recent verse
novel is Silver People,

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and I'm going to
start with introducing

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this as the first one of
my historical verse novels

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for young people
not set in Cuba.

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It's set in Panama,
and I'm going

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to read just a
couple of paragraphs

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from the historical note
at the end to introduce it.

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"In the American-ruled
Canal Zone,

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laborers from all
over the world were

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subjected to a system that
resembled South Africa's

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apartheid.

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Did you know that?

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I'm shocked at how few Americans
think about the Panama Canal

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at all.

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Dark-skinned Islanders
and olive-skinned southern

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Europeans were paid in silver.

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Light-skinned Americans
and northern Europeans

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received gold.

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Housing, meals,
recreation, and hospitals

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were also strictly segregated.

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Of the estimated quarter
million Caribbean Islanders

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who worked in Panama
between 1850 and 1914,

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at least one-third never
returned to their homelands,

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but fanned out across
Central America,

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becoming an integral
part of the region's

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rich cultural heritage.

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