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Dahlma Llanos Figueroa was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, and is the recipient of a Bronx Council on the Arts ACE as well as Brio Awards for both fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work, strongly influenced by her Puerto Rican roots, includes short pieces in several anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul, and Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces. Ms. Llanos teaches creative writing to adults in the Bronx, where she is currently a Bronx Council on the Arts Literary Fellow and where she makes her home.

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Cuban Portraits

An Essay

by Dahlma Llanos Figueroa
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Havana, January 7, 2001, late afternoon

I’m one of twenty American writers who have come to Cuba for two weeks to work with twenty Cuban writers in a cultural exchange program. My conservative Puerto Rican family doesn’t understand my desire to visit Cuba, and my left-wing New York City friends don’t understand my hesitation about coming here.

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