Dominican American poet, author and professor Rei Berroa comes to Eastern Mennonite University for two events in early February.
He is a professor at George Mason University, teaching Spanish poetry, Spanish and Latin American literary and cultural criticism, and creative processes. He has published more than 50 books of poetry, anthologies, translations, and literary criticism.
Berroa will present poetry, song, and poems-in-translation at a Writers Read event 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 1, in Martin Chapel. More details about the Writers Read Author series.
He’ll also speak at convocation at 10:10 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 2, in Lehman Auditorium on the topic of “The Earth Belongs to Each and All of Us.”
Both events will be livestreamed on EMU’s Facebook Live page
His work centers around language, building peace and dissent, ethics, social justice, gender and racial diversity and equality, ecopoetics, and compassionate humanism. During his reading, he will explore the poetics of human expression creating links between the present and the past and looking toward the future. With a poetry anchored in the human experience and following the longstanding Latin American tradition of marrying the social, political, and lyrical expression, Berroa asks uncomfortable questions for which, many times, there are no objective answers.
Berroa completed his undergraduate work in philosophy at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico (Ponce, 1970) and began his graduate work at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Spain (Málaga,1974; Madrid, 1976). He completed MAs in Spanish Literature at Middlebury College (1977) and the University of Pittsburgh (1979), and his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh (1983).
For more on his life, research interests and published works, visit his faculty page at GMU’s website.