'I'd Rather My Granddaughter be a Whore...'

If you were to write a play about Richard Blanco's life, his paternal grandmother would likely get the lead role. In a poem, Blanco says she once told him: "I'd rather my granddaughter be a whore / than my grandson a faggot like you."

Richard Blanco

In a recent interview, he confessed he didn't feel completely free to be who he was -- a gay man -- until his grandmother died.
Blanco, as you likely know, is the man our President tapped to write and deliver his inaugural poem in 2013. Now 46, he's the youngest poet, the only Latino, and the only openly gay man ever to do the honors.

Conceived in Cuba, born in Spain, raised and educated in Miami, it's little wonder that for years Blanco didn't know who he was, where he was from or where he belonged.

After years of longing for his parents' homeland -- the mangos are better there, they told him, the lemons, the beaches -- he temporarily rejected the very culture he longed for.

His most recent collection, "Looking for the Gulf Motel," explores his life as a gay man in the very conservative Cuban culture.

Because Blanco's parents wanted a better life for their son, they offered three career choices: doctor, lawyer, engineer. Good at math, he chose engineering, earning his degree from Florida International University in 1991. In 1999, at Florida International, he completed his MFA under poet Campbell McGrath, and his thesis won the prestigious Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for a first collection.

Hear Blanco read his poetry and talk about his life at Sensoria: 10:30 a.m., April 9, in Halton Theater and again at 7 p.m., in Halton Theater on the Central Piedmont campus. Details: Alice.jenkins@cpcc.edu
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