Thread by @BillyCorben

#BREAKING: Nilo Cruz fled Cuba for freedom, graduated Miami-Dade Schools, became the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama, and was inducted into the @MDCPS student Hall of Fame. Now they have banned students from seeing his play. #BecauseMiami miamiherald.com/news/local/new…

"I told you, my fellow Cuban Americans, that the censors would get around to us. And they have. The day after @MDCPS Board voted to suspend recognition of LGBTQ History Month, officials quietly rejected the work of one of the most prominent Cuban Americans in US cultural life."

"@MDCPS refuses to allow high school students to attend — as they have since 2003 — Miami New Drama’s 20th-anniversary staging of @ncruzny's Pulitzer-winner ANNA IN THE TROPICS: 'My work has been staged around the world — and the only place it has been censored is in Iran.'"

"Until now — when the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama, a distinction that, in 2003, also brought prestige to his hometown’s booming literary and theater scenes, appears to have become the latest victim of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ culture wars."

"'What’s happening in this city?' Cruz asks. 'What’s happening in this country?' A native of Matanzas, Cuba, he’s the son of exiles who arrived on a 1970 Freedom Flight and settled in a Miami neighborhood near the airport where Eastern Airlines’ planes landed over the backyards."

"From there, the family moved to Little Havana. Cruz graduated from Miami public schools: newly integrated Melrose Elementary; Shenandoah, when it was a junior high and not a magnet school — and where he was bullied by two boys — and Miami Senior High School."

"He was exposed to Shakespeare plays as a teen and first studied theater at @MDCollege, before moving to New York to continue his higher education. In 2017, then superintendent Alberto Carvalho inducted the celebrated Cuban-American playwright into @MDCPS student Hall of Fame."

"But now the same district that honored him is keeping students from seeing — for free — his historic work, being performed 1/12-2/5 at @ColonyTheatreMB with Cruz directing it himself. The theater company has even paid for buses after massive public school art budget cuts."

"It’s a literary jewel, poignant and poetic, that charts a historic time of change in Tampa’s immigrant cigar-producing community. Cruz: 'It’s taught in high schools all over the country. It's about immigration, Cuba-US traditions & the power of literature to change our lives.'"

"It’s hard to think of a work that better suits Miami arts and literature students, but @MDCPS, fearful of the ultra-conservative parents DeSantis has empowered and unleashed on them, forgot their mission is to offer learning opportunities, not reject them out of political fear."

"'They have no problem violating my freedom of expression,' Venezuelan-born Miami New Drama co-founder Michel Hausmann said. 'I lived this in Venezuela. I had a falling out with the government for calling things out. The situation is déjà vu for me.'"

"Are we in Castro’s Cuba and Maduro’s Venezuela now? I requested an interview Monday morning with @suptdotres. Later Monday, media relations sent me this statement: 'After thoroughly reviewing Anna in the Tropics, staff determined that the script was not age-appropriate.'"

"But Anna in the Tropics has been appropriate for generations of students 14+ since 2003. Age is the same excuse FL Legislature used for [the 'Don't Say Gay' bill], banning gender identity discussion in, allegedly, K-3 only, and now being widely implemented in schools statewide."

"Is it because Cruz, who had a daughter with a longtime girlfriend, is gay? After the spectacle of last week’s Board meeting, where members were cowed into rejecting LGBTQ History Month by hostile parents, un-Christian-like religious leaders & Proud Boys, it’s a valid suspicion."

“The play has nothing to do with gender identity. I’m not a gay writer. I’m a writer, period. If there’s a theme, it’s the beauty of justice. I identify as an artist. There are complexities that come w/me, like this child I made with a woman I love. We were together a long time.”

"A human being wouldn’t have to declare all this were it not for the dangerous, dark times we’re living through in America. Times, when even a beloved Pulitzer-Prize-winning hometown writer has to explain himself to the censors."

"It’s sadly ironic that students, denied a lesson on the power of literature, are instead learning one about the power of prejudice in society." Column by @fabiolasantiago