Did You Hear About the Fighting Cat?

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra. This book takes up the experiment of connecting Buddhist practices to an American landscape. In a 2008 interview Perez states, "If Buddhism is to have a role in Cuban life it must be in harmony with the basic ethical and natural values of this land; it must give, so to say, its blood and marrow to the soil." Perez seems to have thrown even "revolutionary" readers for a loop by pursuing that harmony, synthesizing island poetics with Zen Buddhism. What, asked his fellow writers, does Zen have to do with Cuba and its cultural traditions?