Video: Richard Blanco and Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Americas Society hosted a conversation and reading featuring Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, recipient of the prestigious Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the featured poet at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in January 2013, as well as Gustavo Pérez Firmat, acclaimed author and cultural critic (The Havana Habit). Blanco read selected poems during the presentation, including "Betting on America," in which he recounts what it was like as a child to watch the Miss America pageant with his Cuban family.