Over a hundred years ago in Key West, a young Galician-Cuban lector–a cigar-factory loud-reader–published his volume of 96 formal poems at a little press on Southard Street. Fresh from Havana and Tampa and utterly enchanted by the beauty of his new home, Feliciano Castro (1892-1982) wrote poetry that evoked Key West’s social world of romance at the turn into the twentieth century: the dances, the theater, the scores of beautiful young women he passionately admired. Lágrimas y flores (Tears and Flowers) also addressed Cuba’s political battle for autonomy—first from imperial Spain, and then from the economic interests of its powerful northern neighbor, the United States–and expressed Castro’s own loneliness of migration and exile. Nearly lost forever, his book was recently rediscovered, translated, and released in a bilingual, facing-page edition with a new critical introduction. This talk by novelist Joy Castro, co-editor of the collection and granddaughter of the poet, opens a door into a little-known aspect of Key West’s rich history.
About the Presenter:
The co-editor of Tears and Flowers: A Poet of Migration in Old Key West (University Press of Florida, 2024), Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the Key West historical novel One Brilliant Flame; Flight Risk, a finalist for a 2022 International Thriller Award; the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, which have both been published in France by Gallimard’s historic Série Noire; the story collection How Winter Began; the memoir The Truth Book; and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award.
She is also editor of the craft anthology Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family and the founding series editor of Machete, a series in innovative literary nonfiction at The Ohio State University Press. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in venues including Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, Senses of Cinema, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. An alternate for the Berlin Prize and a former Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies (Latinx Studies) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies.
- Date: June 5
- Time: 6:00pm - 7:00pm
- Cost: $13.00 - $17.00
- Location: Tropic Cinema
