January 21, 2013 -- Updated 1835 GMT (0235 HKT)
As a gay Cuban immigrant, Richard Blanco says it speaks to America's
strengths that he was chosen to read a poem to the nation at President
Obama's second inauguration. FULL STORY
Inaugural poet: My story is America's
January 21, 2013 -- Updated 1934 GMT (0334 HKT)
Inaugural poet shares message of unity
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Richard Blanco grew up surrounded by Cuban exiles, finding America in sitcom reruns
- Blanco: Negotiating my identity as an American and a gay man is wellspring of my poetry
- Blanco says his life mirrors that of America, a nation of hope still trying to find its own identity
- He says he's lived the American dream: from immigrant to reading poem to the nation
Editor's note: Richard Blanco, a poet and teacher, was chosen to be the nation's fifth inaugural poet. He is the author of the collections of poetry "City of a Hundred Fires," "Directions to the Beach of the Dead," "Place of Mind," and "Looking for the Gulf Motel." Follow him on Twitter at @rblancopoet.
(CNN) -- As my official bio reads, I was made in
Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States -- meaning
my mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of my family arrived as
exiles from Cuba to Madrid, where I was born. Less than two months
later, we emigrated once more and settled in New York City, then
eventually in Miami, where I was raised and educated.
By the time I was 45 days
old, I belonged to three countries. My first newborn photo appears on
my U.S. alien registration card. As an adult, I see this as a
foreshadowing of what would eventually obsess my writing and my psyche:
the negotiation of identity.
My first encounter with
this was with cultural negotiation. My childhood was braced between two
imaginary worlds. The first was the nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba in the
hearts and minds of my parents, grandparents, and immediate family, but
also the exile community at large in Miami. "Somewhere" there was an
island paradise we all came from, a paradise we lost (for complex
reasons I was too young to comprehend), but nevertheless, a paradise, a
homeland known as la patria -- to which we'd all return someday, exactly as we were, to find it exactly as it was.
Richard Blanco
That storyline was what I
knew of that homeland I imagined from family folklore told across the
dinner table, gossip at beauty salons with my mother, or in the aisles
of the mercados shopping for Cuban staples like chorizo and yucca
with my grandmother; or from old photo albums that they had managed to
smuggle out of Cuba, and the rum-drunk talk about "what happened" from
the men playing dominos on the terraza in the backyard.
The other imaginary world -- America-- was at the other end of the spectrum.
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Although technically we
lived in the United States, the Cuban community was culturally insular
in Miami during the 1970s, bonded together by the trauma of exile.
What's more, it seemed that practically everyone was Cuban: my teachers,
my classmates, the mechanic, the bus driver. I didn't grow up feeling
different or treated as a minority. The few kids who got picked on in my
grade school were the ones with freckles and funny last names like
Dawson and O'Neil.
Against that setting,
America seemed like some "other" place. And as a child, I truly believed
that the real America, just beyond my reach, was exactly like the
America I saw on TV reruns like "The Brady Bunch" and "Leave it to
Beaver." In my case, the stereotypical American family was the "other,"
the exotic life yearned for, as much as I yearned to finally see that
imaginary Cuba. Sorting out these contradictions and yearnings was an
everyday part of my childhood, and one of the main themes of my writing
today.
The other negotiation
was the engineer versus the poet. As might be typical, my
exile/immigrant family pushed for me to pursue a career that would
ensure I would have a better life than they did. Also, in a
working-class family, the idea of pursuing a life in the arts was
outside the realm of possibilities. My family even thought architecture
was too "artsy."
Add to that the
cultural-generational divide when it came to the arts in America. Robert
Frost and T.S. Eliot were not dinner conversation at my house. My
parents didn't even know of the Rolling Stones. They wanted me to
continue the story of the "American dream" that they had begun.
Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- I was a whiz at math, and when the
time came to decide on a career path, I succumbed to their loving
insistence. But I always harbored a creative spirit throughout my
childhood, completely taken by Legos, paint-by-number sets, latch-hook
rug kits -- anything that gave me expression.
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My sexual identity was
something I also had to negotiate. The antagonist in my coming-out story
was my grandmother, a woman as xenophobic as she was homophobic.
Anything she perceived as culturally "weird," she also labeled as
"faggotry" -- "mariconería." This included my playing with toys
like G.I. Joes and action figures of super heroes (Wonder Woman being my
favorite). Convinced that I was queer -- she had good intuition, I
guess -- she was verbally and psychologically abusive because she was
also convinced she could make me a "real" man.
She scared me into a
closet so deep and dark that the idea of living as a gay man was
completely, like a career in arts, out of the realm of possibilities.
And so, like many gay men of my generation, I led a straight life, and
was even engaged twice to be married, until I came out in my mid-20s.
Being named poet
laureate for the inauguration personally validates and stitches together
several ideals against which I have long measured America, since the
days of watching "My Three Sons" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" reruns.
For one, the essence of the American dream: how a little Cuban-American
kid on the margins of mainstream America could grow up with confidence,
have the opportunity to become an engineer thanks to the hard work of
his parents who could barely speak English, and then go on, choosing to
become a poet who is now asked to speak to, for and about the entire
nation.
The most powerful
quality of our country is that each day is full of a million
possibilities: We are a country of fierce individualism, which invites
me to shape my life as I see fit. As I reflect on this, I see how the
American story is in many ways my story -- a country still trying to
negotiate its own identity, caught between the paradise of its founding
ideals and the realities of its history, trying to figure it out, trying
to "become" even today -- the word "hope" as fresh on our tongues as it
ever was.
Regardless of my
cultural, socioeconomic background and my sexuality, I have been given a
place at the table, or more precisely, at the podium, because that is
America.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Richard Blanco.
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