Puerto Rican Obituary

The term “Nuyorican” is a combination of “New York City” and “Puerto Rican,” and it distinguishes New York-born Puerto Ricans from ones who moved from Puerto Rico to the United States. It was originally a pejorative that individuals who identified with that background sought to reclaim. The Nuyorican creative movement began in the 1960s and sought to document the struggles faced by working-class Nuyoricans. As explained in poets.org’s “A Brief Guide to Nuyorican Poetry,” “they also tell stories of rebellion, resistance, and endurance in the midst of these struggles.” All of these themes are evident in Pietri’s “Puerto Rican Obituary,” as explained above.

Just like the poets of the Harlem Renaissance sought to document their particular voice, the Nuyorican poets sought to capture the rhythms and speech patterns of their fellow Nuyoricans, leading to a poetry that Miguel Algarín referred to as “street-rooted” (qtd. in “A Brief Guide to Nuyorican Poetry”). By 1973, the movement became so popular that the several members opened the Nuyorican Poets Café when they no longer had room to accommodate all of the artists and audience members who attended readings and get-togethers in Algarín’s apartment. Prominent members of the movement include not just Algarín and Pietri, but also Jack Agüeros, Jorge Brandon, Victor Hernández Crus, and Sandra María Esteves.