Poet Melissa Castillo-Garsow Reads “El Barrio”

Melissa Castillo-Garsow

This week’s New York City Planning Commission’s approval of rezoning East Harlem is expected to usher in sweeping changes to the neighborhood known as El Barrio for its mostly Spanish-speaking residents. Poet Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Ph.D., GSAS ’11, foresaw the change and portrayed it in her poem “El Barrio,” which she performed at the Sept. 25 Poets Out Loud reading.

Castillo-Garsow said she wrote the poem while living in the area as a M.A. student in English at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and at the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute.

This story is reprinted from Fordham News, which also includes a recording of Castillo-Garsow's reading.