New Book by Poet Jose Angel Figueroa

Just released! A Mirror In My Own Backstage by Jose Angel Figueroa (Foreword by Richard Poe)

A GLOBAL society is necessarily a multicultural and multiracial society. This is the inescapable fact of our era. All over the world, people are on the move, colliding and commingling on a scale never seen before.

Where will it end, and what will be the result of this greatest of all human migrations? What does the future hold for the tribes and nations of the earth?

Through his poetry, Jose Angel Figueroa tries to answer this question. He has been grappling with it all his life. Born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico and raised in the cosmopolitan milieu of the city he calls “Noo Jork,” Figueroa confronts the mystery of mingled blood, celebrating the unique blend of Arawak, African and Spanish genes which gave rise to his Puerto Rican people.

Figueroa’s new book, A Mirror in My Own Backstage (Red Sugarcane Press, 2013), expresses the pain and hope of a colonized people seeking to find its place in a post-colonial world. Through profound and patient study, Figueroa mastered the English language and learned to use it to express the passions of his Latino soul. Thus does he transform the English language, that mighty instrument of colonization, into a tool of liberation for the colonized.

More than thirty years ago, Prof. Figueroa kindly took time to encourage and advise me, at a time when I was struggling to find my own voice as a writer and poet. He has been an inspiration and role model ever since. I was deeply honored when Prof. Figueroa asked me to contribute the Foreword to his new book, A Mirror in My Own Backstage.