Cruz, Nilo, << kroos, NEE loh >> (1960-…), a Cuban-born American playwright, became the first Hispanic author to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Cruz received the award in 2003 for Anna in the Tropics (2002). Cruz fled with his family from the Cuban Communist dictatorship to Miami in 1970. His plays typically explore the experiences of Cuban immigrants in the United States. He has been praised for the poetic language in his plays.
Anna in the Tropics takes place among migrant Cubans working in a cigar factory in Tampa, Florida, in 1929. The factory management hires a “lector” to entertain and educate the workers as they make the cigars. The lector reads to them from Anna Karenina (1875-1877), a famous love story by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Gradually, the lives of the workers come to resemble the lives of the characters in the novel, leading to a tragic ending.
Cruz set Two Sisters and a Piano (1998) in Havana in 1991. Two sisters, Maria Celia, a novelist, and Sofia, a pianist, are under house arrest following their release from prison. Maria Celia had written a declaration calling for Cuba’s liberalization and Sofia had signed it, leading to their punishment. The play portrays how the sisters bond to each other in their isolation.
One of Cruz’s earliest plays, A Park in Our House (1996), is a partly autobiographical story that takes place in Cuba in 1970. Cruz’s other plays include Dancing on Her Knees (1996), A Bicycle Country (1999), Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams (2001), Lorca in a Green Dress (2003), and Beauty of the Father (2003). Cruz has also translated plays by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca.
Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Brown University in 1994.
