another good play

i just finished reading Anna in the Tropics, a play by Nilo Cruz. it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. and wow, it is really good. the dialogue is so lyrical and beautiful. it was a very quick and engaging read. lovely and tragic and heartbreaking. it is set in 1929 in tampa, florida in a cigar factory. this factory holds to the old ways of employing a lector to read stories to them while they roll and bunch cigars all day. the story opens with the arrival of a new lector. he reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to them. and in doing so passions are stirred and events triggered. each of the characters relate and allude to one of the characters in AK and the love triangle plays out with a devastating and surprising ending. this is a recommended reading.

one of my favorite parts is when marela is walking with juan julian. i really like the way she describes moments and how in the present she is. she is joyous and light-hearted.

MARELA: Oh, I don't want this night to end. I could stay up all night. I don't want to sleep. We sleep too much. We spend more than a third of our lives sleeping, sleeping. Darkness descends and everything is a mystery to us. We don't know if trees really walk at night, as I've heard in legends. We don't erally know if statues and spirits dance in the wqaures unbeknown to us. And how would we ever know if we sleep? We slep and sleep. . .

JUAN JULIAN: Oh, I want to have what you drank. What did you drink?

MARELA: Oh, I didn't drink. I just feel gladness. Papa was so happy. I like to seee him that way. And Mama waas so full of joy. She's the one who drinks a little too much.

JUAN JULIAN: It's good to drink a little once in a while.

MARELA: Yes, we deserve a little drink. We work hard enough. We deserve all that life offers us, and life is made of little moments. Little moments as small as violet petals. Little moments I could save up in a jar and keep forever, like now talking to you.

JUAN JULIAN: So you are a collector. And what sort of things do you like to collect besides a night like this one.

MARELA: The first time you read and the day you walked me to the pharmacy.

JUAN JULIAN: So I'm in one of your jars.

MARELA: In many.