Readings by Robert Antoni and Adrian Castro (1996)

Dr. Sandra Paquet of the University of Miami English Dept., a Caribbean scholar, gives announcements about upcoming readings, then introduces University of Miami professor of Caribbean studies and award-winning novelist Robert Antoni and translator and poet Adrian Castro. Robert Antoni, who was born in Detroit of Trinidadian parents and raised in the Bahamas, explains a little about his novel Blessed is the Fruit, in which two young West Indian women, one black and one white, live together and become friends. Antoni then reads an excerpt, which he calls "Soup". The passage is narrated by Vel, the black servant, remembering a sad time in her life. Antoni then introduces Adrian Castro, translator and poet born in Miami of Cuban and Dominican heritage. Castro reads a his poems: "Brincando el Charco" (a Cuban euphemism for "jumping the Florida straits"), "Courage," and "Before Becoming a Wise Fish." Castro reads Canto 9 of 16 entitled "Canto of the Tyrant Who Hangs Himself" from his book Cantos to Blood and Honey. he then reads/sings a poem entitled "Para la instalacion de Jose Bedia." The poem was commissioned for an art installation by Cuban artist Jose Bedia. Castro says, "It's sort of a mixture of what we are in the Caribbean."