Red Beans

Poetry and prose by Victor Hernández Cruz

July 1, 1991 • 6 x 9 • 160 pages • 978-0-918273-91-8

Full of native intuitions, Caribbean musical rhythms, Castilian and Moorish mood influences, Red Beans is a historic celebration and a quest, centered in family, culture and nation. Cooked in the Caribbean, Red Beans is a hearty concoction which spices up the English language with a rich combination of cultures and races.

About the Author

Victor Hernández Cruz is the author of several collections of poetry including The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of Al-Andalus. Featured in Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series, Cruz’s collection Maraca was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.

Reviews

 

“Bilingual since childhood, Mr. Cruz writes poems about his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere which often speak to us with a forked tongue, sometimes in a highly literate Spanglish. . . . He’s a funny, hard-edged poet, declining always into mother wit and pathos.” —New York Times Book Review

“Victor Hernández Cruz believes in song; believes that the poem is a song made out of his life and a people’s world. . . . He has to be considered one of the best and freshest lyric poets we have in America today.” —San Francisco Review of Books

“Victor Hernández Cruz’s work showed me the excitement and possibilities of poetry.” —Voice Literary Supplement