Last year around this time, Richard Blanco, a gay Cuban-American, was named the Inaugural poet, the occasion for his writing the poem “One Today.” In an interview for his new memoir, For All of Us, One Today, Blanco discusses how growing up gay in a homophobic environment – his grandmother would tell him, “I’d rather have a granddaughter who’s a whore than a grandson who is a faggot like you” – impacted his writing:
When you’re a kid, you love her unconditionally, and you want to be loved, and at the time, you are just trying to please your grandmother. You act like she tells you not to act. What essentially made sense to me was that my grandmother ultimately made me a writer. She made this prancing little kid with his coloring books and his Play-Doh, she squashed the hell out of him, but she made him an observer of the world versus a participant. She made the little boy with an incredible will to survive — to learn how to read people, and most of all, how to read her emotionally, to know how to act, how to respond, and not be called faggot.
That made me a great observer of human nature, an introvert, and after all, what do writers do but look at the world and write about it. In some ways that was the forgiving moment. I was able to make sense of why my grandmother was in my life. I never had a forgiving moment with her face to face, as the poem describes. It was a great irony that she died without being able to speak. And the silence made me make peace with myself. That’s the only way I can make sense out of her. I don’t think I forgave her more than I just moved on.
The Dish 