Social Justice Poet Martin Espada featured at Laredo Public Library

Poet & essayist Martin Espada will be at the Laredo Public Library's Multi-Purpose room on Thursday, September 15th at 6:30pm.  He is currently a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Espada is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and also has a J.D. from Northeastern University in Boston. Before becoming a published poet, Espada worked many years as a tenant lawyer and a supervisor of a legal services program.

From The Poetry Foundation's website:

Poet, essayist, translator, editor, and attorney: Martín Espada has dedicated much of his career to the pursuit of social justice, including fighting for Latino rights and reclaiming the historical record. Espada’s critically acclaimed collections of poetry celebrate—and lament—the immigrant and working class experience.

Whether narrating the struggles of Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as they adjust to life in the United States, or chronicling the battles Central and South American Latinos have waged against their own repressive governments, Espada has put "otherness," powerlessness, and poverty, into poetry that is at once moving and exquisitely imagistic".