i am joined by elizabeth acevedo , the current u.s. people's poet laureate and the author of the book, "poet x" a national book award winner antedates "velshi" book club feature. welcome to the banned book low, thank you for joining us. >> i would say i am glad to be here, but the reason is a little-- >> well, we are in the fight and we are glad to have you here. something i mentioned in the introduction, the religious component of "poet x" for one, xiomara examines the theatrics at play in her catholicism. it is more than theology to believe, it is cultural as well. when we are talking about religion or being critical of religion, it can be very hard to disentangle faith and culture. >> it really can be. the dominican republic is a place that is almost 90% catholic. as we know, a lot of latin american nations were colonized by spain, which was a part of its mission, to promote catholicism or catholic. culture and religion becomes very, very intertwined. the main character is questioning god, but also questioning what it means to come