LEWIS: One of the things that I noticed when I was translating your play, Hotel les Alizes, was that you pay homage to black American history. Your female character is compared to Josephine Baker. I was curious about that. America seems to function very much the way Rome did at a much earlier point in the world's history. Everyone seems to look up to this country. How has America affected Caribbean culture and is it an ongoing process?

CONDE: In the Caribbean we see the attention that people like Michael Jackson and Jesse Jackson are getting, and the writer Toni Morrison who wins a Pulitzer Prize. So the Caribbean people see America as a place where a black person can be successful. But those of us from the Caribbean who come here regularly, we know there's another reality. We tell our people that there are black people begging and living in the streets, and they don't believe us. We don't want to destroy all their hopes, because people have to hope for something. America is a positive symbol. We have to admit that. If a black person has energy and talent and works really hard, he or she can succeed in America.