Poet and novelist Pablo Medina’s new book, Cubop City Blues (Grove, $25), fuses raw, passionate language and elegant lyricism to breathe life into a musically disguised New York City, shaped by jazz masters, refugees, and storytellers. Our guide into Cubop City is The Storyteller, born nearly blind and shrouded in his mother’s guilt. Through his tales—full of magic, sorrow, longing, and romance—Cubop City surges colorfully to life. Moving through myriad points of view, The Storyteller imagines a world populated by well-known figures like Chano Pozo, the Cuban percussionist, and Jelly Roll Morton, the American jazz pianist, and invented characters. Molded in the cadence and harmony of Afro-Cuban jazz, Cubop City Blues is a symphonic portrait of a bustling urban landscape and the intimate lives and stories that give a city its voice. Presented in collaboration with The Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College.