BRONX, N.Y., April 15 -- The Hostos Community College issued the following news release:
On Tuesday, April 14, the Hostos Research Center (HRC), normally a scholarly venue for research presentations and grant-writing workshops, was transformed into a barrio streetcorner, with a circle of plastic lawn chairs huddled in front of an imaginary bodega, and a makeshift podium of stacked milk cartons festooned with wild flowers seemingly just picked from an empty lot nearby. While a duo of bongos and guitar played softly in the background, a trio of Dominican American women poets, tattooed, pierced and unapologetically fierce, unleashed a torrent of verse as a couple of dancers gyrated down the aisle. This was "Bachata Poetics: An Afternoon of Po...