As my official bio reads, I was made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States -- meaning my mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of my family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid, where I was born. Less than two months later, we emigrated once more and settled in New York City, then eventually in Miami, where I was raised and educated. By the time I was 45 days old, I belonged to three countries. My first newborn photo appears on my U.S. alien registration card. As an adult, I see this as a foreshadowing of what would eventually obsess my writing and my psyche:  the negotiation of identity.
@highlight
Richard Blanco grew up surrounded by Cuban exiles, finding America in sitcom reruns
@highlight
Blanco: Negotiating my identity as an American and a gay man is wellspring of my poetry
@highlight
Blanco says his life mirrors that of America, a nation of hope still trying to find its own identity
@highlight
He says he's lived the American dream: from immigrant to reading poem to the nation
Cuban
That storyline was what I knew of that homeland I imagined from family folklore told across the dinner table, gossip at beauty salons with my mother, or in the aisles of the mercados shopping for @placeholder staples like chorizo and yucca with my grandmother; or from old photo albums that they had managed to smuggle out of Cuba, and the rum-drunk talk about "what happened" from the men playing dominos on the terraza in the backyard.
Cuban
Although technically we lived in the United States, the @placeholder community was culturally insular in Miami during the 1970s, bonded together by the trauma of exile.
Cuban
What's more, it seemed that practically everyone was @placeholder: my teachers, my classmates, the mechanic, the bus driver.
United States
U.S.
America
American
America
American
In my case, the stereotypical @placeholder family was the "other," the exotic life yearned for, as much as I yearned to finally see that imaginary Cuba.