'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
704-330-6122 (O)

New York Times Senior Writer Speaking at CPCC

Margalit Fox

My favorite New York Times writer is coming to Charlotte.

Margalit Fox's riveting obituaries of the famous, the infamous and the just plain interesting are so newsy and entertaining, her subjects plump back to life as you read. In 2012, she wrote this about the founder of Cosmopolitan magazine:

"Helen Gurley Brown ...died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 90, though parts of her were considerably younger."

Fox spent the first nine years at the Times as a copy editor, she said by phone from New York. But "her deepest desire was to write rather than cleaning up other people's copy."

So when a position in the obituary department came open, she applied, aware that it was considered to be the beat nobody wanted. "But it's the best beat at the paper," she said.

"We all love to be told stories, and an obit by definition is the purest narrative thing in any paper," Fox said. "I have the privilege of writing obits every day. It doesn't get any better than that."

Fox has two books: "The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code," about the history of the ancient Minoan B Code, and "Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind."

She'll discuss "The Riddle" at 11 a.m., April 10, in CPCC's Pease Auditorium. At 7 that evening in Tate Hall, she'll talk about obituary writing.

Other speakers that week include N.C. Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti, and Richard Blanco, the youngest poet ever to be tapped to give the inaugural address (for President Barack Obama in 2013).

Details: Alice.jenkins@cpcc.edu.