ANY SPECIAL LIBRARIES IN YOUR PAST?

In 1999, I received a minority fellowship to obtain a master's degree at UMASS-Amherst. I had never really won anything in my life. I mean my mediocre high-school grades had improved dramatically as I neared my Bachelors in English. But, had I improved my grades so much that a college more than 1,000 miles away would pay to have me study there? This idea boggled my brain for days.

It's not that I was uninterested in learning when I was a high school student; even at that age, I felt that a lot of the work was monotonous and strikingly dull on purpose. And, since this strayed egregiously from the true discovery of learning, I decided that I would apply myself just enough so that I may pass the year. I straight plodded through high school.

Four years at Florida International University had bolstered my confidence in myself as a scholar; I had studied abroad in London; I had joined a slew of extra-curricular nerd modules. I had friends in high places like the on-campus convenience store and the beer cue at the Student Cellar. But would I have the courage to go to far-ass Massachusetts and study there. My parents and I took a road trip over the summer and shortly after I accepted the offer from the ALANA office and came to UMASS-Amherst.

If you have ever been to the Pioneer Valley, you know that there are not a lot of skyscrapers. In fact, most of the buildings aren't higher than six floors. However, the UMASS campus in Amherst houses the W.E.B. DuBois Library. This library is something like 25 floors high and is really a gargantuan, beautiful institute. Despite it's physical stature, the most important thing about the DuBois was the collection. In fact, as a result of the collection at the DuBois, I was able to interract with several Latin American authors that I never would discovered.

I am not talking about Pablo Neruda. Everybody reads Neruda and Mario Benedetti. The DuBois introduced me to writers like Oliveiro Girondo and his Espantapajaros(192?) or the many novel of Mario Vargas Llosa. I mean it is hard for me to think of a life without Vargas Llosa's Tia Julia and the Script Writer. In fact, through the Latin American Literature holdings at the DuBois I was able to reconnect with a large part of the history of Argentina, the country my parent's immigrated from.

The DuBois' silhouette can be seen from Sugarloaf, an elevated state park about seven miles away, and is the most pronounced building on campus despite the other skyscraper dorm towers with the names of American presidents in the SouthWest Dorm Area. Presently, the DuBois holds my first master's thesis, titled Hyphen-American, which is an earlier name of my current poetry manuscript, Spicaresque. The books I found at the DuBois are as much a part of my manuscript as the poems that constitute it. After graduating in 2002, I moved to New York City. I moved into an attic close to Church Street in Windsor Heights/Carrol Gardens and learned how to move about on in Brooklyn. I would eventually end up on Ocean Parkway and Ave.O but have used the Brooklyn Public Library extensively. More importantly, I have greatly take advantage of the Main Branch at Grand Army Plaza.