• Submitted by: Camila
• Arts and Culture
• 11 / 14 / 2014

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Richard Blanco is the first gay poet and the first Hispanic in a presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in 2013. Son of Cuban parents he was born in Florida where he presents his new book recounting experiences and stories from his childhood.

The Prince of The Fireflies takes readers to Miami from the decades of the seventies and eighties, where the Blanco family built a new life after leaving Cuba. The poems included in the book recount experiences that came while away the author of his Cuban roots, because while his family kept the traditions he was ashamed of them.

The stories told by Blanco in his new book are full of humor and nostalgia, but above all, highlights the mixing of sentiment in a person born in the United States with Cuban parents, where in Thanksgiving a roast pork was served.

Blanco has toured the United States giving lectures, writing poems and essays, as well as presenting two books. He has become a literary spokesman who advocates a more inclusive country and revealed his own struggles to come to terms with his identity as gay.