Blog 1
By: Kaid Almuntaser, Elijah Herring, and Heidy Espinal
Interviewing Cara De La Luz on what she loves about life
Interviewer: Hello everyone, we have a Puerto Rican poet with us today. Today we have Caridad De La Luz with us, and she is a poet that has performed in the Nuyorican poet café. Hello Caridad De La Luz, may you introduce yourself.
Caridad De La Luz: Good afternoon everyone, I am Caridad De La Luz, and I am a Puerto Rican poet. I was raised and born in Bronx and have see the Bronx as my home. I have been around poetry for all my life and actually wanted to become a brain surgeon as a child.
Interviewer: As you said, you have been around poetry your whole life. Who did you learn or get familiar with poetry from?
Caridad De La Luz: My grandmother started poetry in my life. She used to remember poems since she could not read or write. She would recite them to me, and I would remember them but when I got into school, I eventually started forgetting them.
Interviewer: What is something that you hold dear to your heart?
Caridad De La Luz: I hold family dear to my heart. I used to live in a house where my great grandmother would live in the basement, my grandmother would live on the first floor and my family and I were on the second floor. My family used to always go to my grandmother’s side of the house and even when we moved out, my family and aunts and uncles would always go to my grandmother’s house for all the holidays.
Interviewer: Who was someone very inspirational in your life?
Caridad De La Luz: My grandmother and Julia de Burgos were very inspirational. Julia de Burgos was the first Puerto Rican poet that wrote her poems in English.
Interviewer: Who are you a big fan of?
Caridad De La Luz: I love Draco Rosa. He entered the boyband MENUDO, and he was the first one to sing in English. He represented the Nuyorican culture like non other. He helped me become more creative, resilient, and helped increase my cultural pride. He fought cancer and then toured his album Monte Sagrado. He is a great man with great humility.
Interviewer: How to you view the Nuyorican poet café?
Caridad De La Luz: I see the Nuyorican poet café as a community, a family, a home. It is a place where we can speak freely about how we feel and all the pain that we have gone through. It is a place where can celebrate all the achievements we have accomplished.
This is an interview Caridad De La Luz was part of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mke2MHmPaXY
This is her reading a poem for Julia De Burgos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHFT0IJe52I
