Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of Estados Unidos

López, Edrik Nuyorican spaces: mapping identity in a poetic geography Centro Journal, vol. XVII, núm. 1, spring, 2005, pp. 202-219 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos

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CENTRO Journal

Volume7 xv1i Number 1 spring 2005

Nuyorican spaces: Mapping identity in a poetic geography

EDRIK LÓPEZ spacial mediations central space ABSTRACT This paper examines the role spatial constructions in Nuyorican poetry have in the discourse on a Nuyorican identity. It revisits Juan Flores’ essay “‘Qué assimilated, outside marginal space brother, yo soy asimilao’: the Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity in the U.S.” (1985). In his essay, Flores identified “four moments” of a Nuyorican consciousness he encountered in Nuyorican poetry. My paper attempts to elaborate on Flores’ argument and argue that the “four moments” are linked to relations with space. Moreover, these spatial constructions constitute a layered conversation on national identity. The paper examines major Nuyorican spaces in important Nuyorican poems. [Key words: poetry, Nuyorican poets, Puerto Rican, space, Nuyorican identity]

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Nuyorican poetry is obsessed with space. It meditates in the literary by associating its space with a valence of national identity. Carmelo Esterrich writes in “Home and the Ruins of Language” (1998) that “Nuyorican writing has always been caught in the critical crossfire between two national places— and the US—between their literary and linguistic borders” (1). Redirecting Esterrich’s claim, I posit that instead of being in that crossfire, Nuyorican poetry fires at national spaces. Above everything else that Nuyorican writing has been concerned with—migration, language, urban depravity—spatial constructions constitute the critical sites of contention in Nuyorican poetry. It constructs its surrounding space not as the setting of where the events of their poetry occur, but as the reason Nuyorican poetry happens. I bring attention to certain spaces for their importance as identity markers. Therefore, this paper paints a Nuyorican literary map. The sketches of this mapping project was initiated by Juan Flores’ essay, “‘Qué assimilated, brother, yo soy asimilao’: the Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity in the U.S.” (1985). There, Flores identifies “four moments” of Nuyorican identity tethered to various states of cultural awareness. These are interestingly linked to TheThe pavementpavement hhadad mmouthsouths tthathat aatete tthem...hem... relations with space. I will revisit that foundational essay and contend that a discussion on space in Nuyorican poetry is undoubtedly a layered conversation on national identity. Víctor Hernández Cruz For Flores, the four moments are stages in a developing consciousness of a Nuyorican’s cultural awareness. The first moment is the “here and now,” the immediate perception of New York to the migrant Puerto Rican. “There are abandoned buildings, welfare lines, the run-down streets . . . in short the condition of hostility” (Flores 186). This is the abandonment of New York. The second moment is “a romanticized, idealized image of Puerto Rico” (Flores 187). This is the state of enchantment. It is also a recovery of the African and indigenous foundation of Puerto Rican culture. After this, the third moment is a movement back to New York: “the New York scene now includes ” (Flores 189). Puerto Rican life in the U.S. does have a deep source of cultural energy. It is this moment that recognizes the Nuyorican as a legitimated consciousness. Once this is complete, the fourth moment is the “connection to and interaction with the surrounding North American society” (Flores 189). Flores here alludes to the opening conversation in his essay with a friend, who notices the close interaction between African and Puerto Ricans in New York, as well as to the essay’s final component, a reading of ’s poem “Vaya Carnal.” My interest in relation to Flores’ conceptualization of Nuyorican identity is not to directly critique it, but rather, to answer in exactly what ways these moments are manifested in Nuyorican poetry and to highlight the way space is the central discursive tool answering questions of national identity. The charged nature of spatial constructions—the pavement had mouths that ate them—refracts an identity clash occurring in the poems. Because of colonialism, identity crisis is a question of national orientation. Flores mentions that the “national” moment occurs in the third moment of Nuyorican consciousness; however, in examining spatial constructions, it becomes apparent that all the moments relate to national identity. Figuring out in what space she belongs, the Nuyorican is trying to formulate who she is. Even in the name Nuyorican,

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“national” space is the defining element. The major way of defining Puerto Ricans Miguel Piñeros’ has been to “divide Puerto Ricans into los de aqu y los de all ,” from here or from over there; one situates oneself either from Puerto Rico or outside of it in the United “A Lower East Side Poem” States, using space as the first and prime identity marker (Acosta-Belen 984). In claiming that Nuyorican poetry is all about space, the poet assembles an Just once before I die identity—the New York Puerto Rican--in the construction of those spaces. I want to climb up on a The act of representing those spaces becomes a way to find out, to investigate, Tenement sky what los de aquí exactly means. (Or los de allá, depending on where you are reading To dream my lungs out till from.) Spatial constructions in Nuyorican poetry become a way of establishing I cry Nuyorican boundaries, both in space and in matters of identity. While the Then scatter my ashes thru construction of Nuyorican spaces is animated in the poetry, a discourse on an The Lower East Side. essential community is established. A sort of moral geography occurs, as Roland [ ...... ] Barthes says, in which certain attitudes, values, ways of seeing spaces are There’s no other place for me to be encouraged over others. That is why Nuyorican poetry necessarily repeats itself. It repeats its images: the streets, cockroach apartments, Loisaida, el Barrio, the projects, There’s no other place that I can see pawn shops, prison, bodegas. Repeating itself all the way to that very central place, [ ...... ] that “imaginary place called Puerto Rico,” as Victor Hernández Cruz calls it I don’t wanna be buried in Puerto Rico (Hernández, Tropicalization). The question then becomes, how do these spaces I don’t wanna rest in long island cemetery create the Nuyorican? What does a certain view of Puerto Rico encourage? I wanna be near the stabbing shooting The poems define those who are called “los de aquí,” by focusing on the aquí. gambling fighting & unnatural dying This essay is a discourse-minded construction intended to get a generalized & new birth crying understanding of space’s role in Nuyorican poetry. so please when I die… I trace a discourse of Nuyorican space without claiming that such a discourse don’t take me far away reveals any “true” knowledge of that space. Rather, I give attention to the poets of the U.S. Puerto Rican community and their mediation of “real” space onto the keep me near by literary. I am interested in the troping of space, the way corresponding representations take my ashes and scatter them thru out from various texts inform readers of the manifestation of a discursive community. the Lower East side… (Piñero 7) This article focuses on poetry. Yet Henri Lefebvre, who informs many theories on space, warns that “the problem is that any search for space in literary texts will find A couple of significant moves occur in Piñero’s poem. The first is that (like Bimbo Rivas’ it everywhere and in every guise: enclosed, described, projected, dreamt of, coining poem “Loisaida”) the work establishes a Nuyorican poetic center. The Lower East speculated about. What texts can be considered special enough to provide the becomes the capital, home to the life and death struggles of U.S. Puerto Ricans. The next basis for a ‘textual’ analysis?” (15). I have let others decide that question for me in significant move is that the author establishes a couple of Nuyorican margins, suggesting choosing not to problematize the texts that have been selected by various anthologies, at least two places as such: the suburbs, “don’t wanna rest in long island” and, ironically to including those compiled by founding members of the Nuyorican poetry movement. some, Puerto Rico, “don’t wanna be buried in Puerto Rico.” More than Long Island This paper traces patterns, repetitions, metonymic gestures. suburbs, Puerto Rico becomes the Nuyorican’s “other.” Here the rejection encompasses Puerto Rico and the wild abandon of New York. However inspiring the poem may sound, central space (: NY, USA) there is a sense of resigned acceptance for the way things are. Piñero embraces the abandon The centrality of a place in a literary work is established by the frequency and of New York through the acceptance of its horrible conditions. Even though his poem is importance of the transactions that occur in it, by the weight in the behavior of projected as a positive, Nuyorican, life-affirming cry, its assertion also acknowledges the characters, and by the force of the imagery and style in describing it (Lutwack 43). hopelessness of finding identity in that national space. Home is the place Piñero dies in That space in Nuyorican poetry is . However, specifically in regard to but does not live in. While on a rooftop, he screams, “there is no other place that I can see.” the Nuyorican poetry experience, one space rises above others: Loisaida—the Lower This is not acceptance of that space; it is a resignation. Víctor Hernández Cruz presents East Side. Loisaida houses the experiences of these poems articulating Flores’ first another view of the first moment of the abandon of New York. moment of a Nuyorican consciousness as they echo the abandon of New York. The significance is that these central spaces articulating abandon do so because the U.S. Puerto Rican experiences the abandon as a false desire, with the result that one cannot fully relate to the initial experience of such a national identity. As exemplified by Miguel Piñero, these poems articulate a sense of hopelessness and an inability to project anything other than total closure for the Nuyorican.

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Víctor Hernández Cruz’s polishing their desiring dreams “The Lower East Side of ” [ ...... ] and all that remains The Lower East Side a graffiti design on a piss Was faster than the speed side street. (Cienfuegos Aloud 312) Of light A tornado of bricks Like ’ Down These Mean Streets, Cienfuegos’ poem makes the assertion And fire escapes that to understand the people one has to understand the spaces from which they are formed. The streets are personified, blurring the distinction between body and space. [ ...... ] The line “Weaving, bobbing, conniving” anthropomorphizes the streets, allowing a reflec- I knew Anthonys tion between people and spaces. A sort of metaphysical fusion occurs between the people’s And Carmens psyche and the urban physiognomy. This fusion becomes even more apparent in poems [ ...... ] that contrast the life outside, on the streets, with the one inside in the home. Both home Where are they? and street in this first moment, however, repeat the abandon experienced thus far. The windows sucked them up The pavement had mouths that Martin Espada’s Ate them “City of Coughing” Urban vanishment (Hernández Panoramas 28) They bang the radiators Hernández Cruz’s poem is one of thematic movement. It starts in a state of innocence like cold hollow marimbas; and happiness when he describes the kids riding their bikes “across the Williamsburg they cry out to unseen creatures Bridge.” Then it moves to disillusion when he notices the immigrants that wonder skittering across their feet “where the mountains” went. Finally, it is a final jump to the tragedy of that Nuyorican space when he remembers his friends, the Anthonys and Carmens. Responding to the in darkness; question that asks “Where are they?,” he answers by saying that their home, the Lower they fold hands over plates East Side with its windows and pavements, swallowed them up. A significant effect of this to protect food poem is that it begins to establish and draw out clearly what Miguel Piñero’s poem was from ceilings black with roaches. hinting at: that the Nuyorican center is perhaps a “tragic center” (does this then signify (Espada City of Coughing… 39) that to some poets the Nuyorican self is a tragic self?). This places in which the mapping occurs takes place in a new light. If indeed Loisaida is also a tragic center, then the boundaries seem less a place where Nuyoricans have staked their claim and more like “My Cockroach Lover” walls that keep them inside. It is on the streets, however, that the major sense of tragedy is found. But how exactly does the pavement eat the people? To project onto the people there were roaches tough hard lonesome itself, the streets are conceptualized in Nuyorican poetry as , , and . between bristles of my toothbrush, Lucky Cienfuegos’ roaches pouring “Piss Side Street” from the speakers of the stereo. Weaving, bobbing, conniving [ ...... ] piss staining lonely night street One night I dreamed gutless buildings hanging loose a giant roach [ ...... ] leaned over me, [ . . . ] people just glide brushing my face with a design and frequent smile with kind antennae yeah, bad doing studs peeking and whispering, “I love you.” through dark shadow alleys (Espada Imagine the Angels of Bread 48)

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In the traditional way of seeing a home, it is a place of refuge. It is the place where Víctor Hernández Cruz’s one goes to for restoration, away from the hustle of the streets. It is the place where one is comforted by all the familiar things of childhood. The home represents family, “Three Songs from the 50s” class, and the society one lives in more than any other space. Nevertheless, in a predominant number of poems, the Nuyorican home demarcates, through the We used to think about my Uncle Listo centrality of the roach, another moment of abandon. Who never left his hometown As a former tenant lawyer, Espada draws his experience from his visits with the We’d picture him sitting around urban poor. The cockroach is used as a marker of the abandon that class cooling himself with a fan experiences. The astounding factor in these two poems is the extent of that abandon In that imaginary place as signified by the numbers of cockroaches—covering the ceiling to make it black, called Puerto Rico. (Hernández Tropicalization) in the bristles of toothbrushes, in stereo speakers, and so on. In the Nuyorican home, that deterioration has invaded and crept inside the walls. Nuyorican identity It is through a “mythical view,” Efraín Barradas has written, that most Nuyorican becomes crucial here because the Nuyorican starts identifying with this symbol poetry sees Puerto Rico (Barradas 46). In Cruz’s poem, the poet is remembering his of deterioration; the roach becomes a symbol of the first moment of the urban childhood and the way he used to visualize his uncle. However, he admits he never experience. So much so that, as Martín Espada shows, it becomes an absurd object had a real image of Puerto Rico. Nuyorican poetry has romanticized Puerto Rico. of someone’s affection. A person must love a home, but if a home is filled with Puerto Rico is the mythical birth-home, and many of the experiences and images a roaches, an extension of that intimacy is made to the roaches. (I wonder about Nuyorican receives from Puerto Rico carry with them the idea of Puerto Rico being Miguel Piñero’s embrace of the “stabbing, shooting, gambling, fighting & unnatural a tropical paradise. The overcoding of Puerto Rico as a paradise and New York as a dying.”) Espada reinterprets Kafka’s metaphorical use of the roach as symbol of the cold, steel and glass desert demarcates a rejection of both those spaces—a strategic alienation of modernity. There is no symbolism here, though. These roaches are real. step that will lead, as Tato Laviera shows, to the overcoding of the people themselves. The gesture that I have been tracing in these first poems is the fact that New York has abandoned the Puerto Ricans and the recognition they are not welcomed in this nation. They are outside New York and its clichéd dreams of immigrant success. Tato Laviera’s Theirs is the dying, gutted building, on a side street of New York. In his real “Sky People” experiences, he realizes, they are not quite this nation. These are protest poems opposing the abandon of the urban world. The bigger protest is made when the Eye-scratching mountain view Nuyorican realizes that he is this urban person, and is seen in opposition to the Puerto Rico counting houses way Puerto Ricans from the island are seen. upon houses, hill after hill, marginal space (: Puerto Rico, USA) in valleys and in peaks, A destitute urban identification contrasts starkly with the Nuyorican view of the to observe: la gente del cielo paradise of Puerto Rico. This is Flores’ second moment—the state of enchantment. [ ...... ] This is also another negation of national identity. Miguel Piñero has already pointed who prayed in nature’s candlelight, out that Puerto Rico is a marginal space. The examination here is the way los de allá galaxies responding with milky way guinaítas are seen by los de aquí. When speaking of the way that vegetation is represented and winked in tropical earth smile, constructed in a literary work, that vegetation has an affect of being associated with as God gleefully conceded life, with fertility, with vigor and hope. In the same way, places that are devoid of what we had perceived all along, vegetation are usually associated with death and deprivation; a lack of nature is that Puerto Rico is 100 by 35 by 1000 associated with sterility in the wastelands of twentieth-century literature. This is a major trope of modern literature. In Nuyorican poetry, there is a spatial arrangement mountains multiplied by the square root in the way vegetation is constructed. The poetic arrangement becomes a dialectical of many cultures breathing: ONE. (Laviera Enclave 39) exercise. If New York is pavement, then Puerto Rico is dirt roads. If New York is glass, then Puerto Rico is sand. In essence, as Hernández Cruz shows, the dialectic In “Sky People,” we have many of the Nuyorican myths about Puerto Rico come leads us to the equation: if New York is real, then Puerto Rico is imagined. to life. We have a characteristic alignment with Nature. We have a sense of a cosmic harmony: the island delivers a “tropical earth smile,” with a God that is approving. Finally, we have a sense of a racial and cultural harmony as the poet reduces Puerto Rico to a mythological, harmonious number: “ONE”—one culture, one race, one God, one people. The image of Puerto Rico, the way Puerto Rico has been represented in Nuyorican poetry, has been filled with images of nature—the palm

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trees, beaches, green mountains. Even the Puerto Rican people are seemingly The beauty of Coca-Cola and coco frío occurs in the moment of epiphany when “more natural” than a Nuyorican. The way Nuyorican poetry has constructed its the boy realizes that “Puerto Rico [is] not Coca-Cola.” The Coca-Cola on the island own self in relation to vegetation has taken the other pole—it has been mainly is alien. The result of the injection of American commerce is at the cost of forgetting disassociated with nature and aligned with industry—with the concrete streets and about the abundance of natural resources the boy sees the island having. The way his the brick buildings of New York City. While a Nuyorican sees a Puerto Rican basking aunts “steered” him to the Coca-Cola suggests a hypnotic trance has victimized not under the warm Puerto Rican sun, the Nuyorican is walking down cold, gray streets only his family but all Puerto Ricans. This suggests that the original state of Puerto of a postindustrial nation that has lost its way. As Víctor Hernández Cruz says, Rico is an Eden where commercial sin has been the deforming agent. There are also “like you loose your natural color when you leave a tropical/country and come to (problematic) suggestions of a gendered, virgin land that has not been used to its a city where the sun/feels like it’s constipated” (Hernández Aloud 315). potential (“coconuts . . . unsuckled”). This may also be part of that mythological In addition, a major concern among Nuyorican poets is the penetration of Puerto Rico we mentioned Nuyorican poetry falls under. This leads to the sadness American commerce that usurps and replaces what is natural in Puerto Rico. at the end of the poem as the little boy—now years later—still “marvels at an island” These poems are expressions of a loss to an American industry that has removed where the people choose Coca-Cola over the native drink, coco frío. Nuyorican the Puerto Rican people from the essential naturalness of their island, and a rejection poets, however, have moved to demythologize Puerto Rico. of Puerto Rico for what it has become. I hear Piñero say, “from this pan am eastern first national chase manhattan puerto rico” (Piñero 14). Martín Espada shows that Tato Laviera’s in addition to the enchantment, there is also a sense of melancholy. “Nuyorican”

Martín Espada’s yo peleo por ti, puerto rico, sabes? “Coca-Cola and Coco Frío” yo me defiendo por tu nombre, sabes? entro a tu isla, me siento extraño, sabes? On his first visit to Puerto Rico [ ...... ] island of family folklore, ahora regreso, con un corazón boricua, y tú, the fat boy wandered me desprecias, me miras mal, me atacas mi hablar, from table to table mientras comes mcdonalds en discotecas americanas, with his mouth open. y no pudes bailar la salsa en san juan, la que yo At every table, some great-aunt bailo en mis barrios llenos de todas tus costumbres, would steer him with cool spotted hands así que, si tú no me quieres, pues yo tengo to a glass of Coca-Cola. [ . . . ] un puerto rico sabrosísimo en que buscar refugio [ . . . ] He drank obediently, though en nueva york, y en muchos otros callejones he was bored with this potion, familiar (Laviera AmeRícan 53) from soda fountains in . In aligning Puerto Rico with “McDonald’s and American discotecas,” Laviera Then, at a roadside stand off the beach, the fat boy begins to move back to re-engaging New York. Here the significance is the rejection opened his mouth to coco frío, a coconut that the poet feels from that space called Puerto Rico. The poem is a reaction to chilled, then scalped by a machete having seen Puerto Rico all his life as his homeland, as his patria. Puerto Rico is the so that a straw could inhale the clear milk. reason that he has to defend himself, the reason he feels persecuted and abandoned The boy tilted the green shell overhead as a Nuyorican, the reason he feels ambivalent in the United States. When he and drooled coconut milk down his chin; approaches his mythical birth home and is rejected, it crushes him, but it also solidifies the idea that his home is not Puerto Rico. He is more authentically Puerto suddenly, Puerto Rico was not Coca-Cola Rican in his barrio. The poets reject Puerto Rico as the site of his national identity. or Brooklyn, and neither was he. They are even more outside the island than New York. After constructing it as a paradise, and becoming enchanted by the images of its tropical beauty, Laviera is For years afterward, the boy marveled at an island moved to return to New York. Here is the movement to the third moment of a where the people drank Coca-Cola [ . . . ] Nuyorican consciousness, the reengagement with New York. while so many coconuts in the trees sagged heavy with milk, swollen and unsuckled. (Espada City of Coughing 26c)

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spatial mediations (: Nuyorico, New York) there is no sea inside. A vague but significant point toward the end of the poem is made While Laviera returns to New York by inverting the discursive mode of by the poet realizing (falsely) that it would have been so easy to have that imagined enchantment/disillusion identified earlier in this paper, other poets also reengage landscape in front of him: “All we had to do…was take…the plane.” However, as we have New York through various means. The movement back to New York, however, seen from other Nuyorican poets (such as Laviera and Espada), going to Puerto Rico to does not necessarily imply an acceptance of it as a place of national identity. find that embracing sea might also prove futile. But there are other ways. The focus on New York is a highlighting of the Puerto Ricans in it. The poem that follows by Pietri is focused on the reconciliation brought about by accepting Miguel Algarín’s the fact that Puerto Ricans will permanently remain on the mainland. “4th St”:

Pedro Pietri’s La salsa resuena “Wet Hand on Dry Dreams”: and the people are poor but wait I sit down and wonder this isn’t a poem If the chair I’m sitting on of complaint Is wondering also? this is a poem of hope, la salsa resuena There is no sea and my veins choke up with blood, Inside this apartment— my skin stretches I am staring into a mirror over my bone frame With perfect impaired vision and resounds to the street music Of forever lost memory, that taps my every pore (Algarín Nuyorican Poetry 95) Flashbacks of unseen landscape Where the journey to nowhere begins The New York scene changes, now including the New York Puerto Ricans and their [ ...... ] forms of cultural expressions. The poem shows the transformative power music has This apartment isn’t a beach! on Nuyorican spaces. The salsa on the streets alter the spaces from the normative The sea has no business here. adjectives—mean, tough, dark, dirty—to a place where hope resides. Algarín is describing [ ...... ] the Nuyorican as a community, showing that where the people are living, there is a sense of hope and love. Here the streets are alive, breathing and fighting the dying and violence Whether your roots approve or not of the earlier pieces of death and depravity, the pieces where abandon forecloses hope. This empty room also goes to Puerto Rico! Sandra María Esteves shows us a third way of reengaging the New York scene. [ ...... ] Love becomes the vehicle by which one of her poems transforms New York. New York Life didn’t have to be so hard is described in a positive manner as it shows New York changing with the new All we had to do to see the sea population. She is able to discover a U.S. Puerto Rican identity in the act of loving. Was to take the train to the plane Not stare at four blank walls Sandra María Esteves [ ...... ] “For Tito” The sea could have really been The sea and not tears from eyes (Pietri Aloud 341) planting seeds in the night together Pietri addresses space directly through the distortion of space to escape it. The poem we reap mystical sugarcane in the ghetto offers a surreal management of the setting, crying out that “this apartment is no beach!” where all the palm trees grow ripe as a way of communicating a lapse into a nostalgic hallucination. The distortions caused and rich with coconut milk (Esteves in Nuyorican Poetry 133) by the “flashbacks of unseen landscapes” address the nostalgia that is manifested in so many Nuyorican poems. Flores’ third moment—the return to New York and Love transforms the urban landscape through the use of sugarcanes and palm trees consequent reengagement with the city—does not imagine Puerto Rico in New York, in the New York ghetto. This move toward nature cannot be understated because but rather the Puerto Ricans living in the city. Pietri copes with his surroundings by the normative is to positively describe Puerto Rico with representations of nature. manipulating his visual landscape. But he fails in doing so because he understands that

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Those three forms of reengagement with Nuyorican spaces—carried out through [ . . . ] a California Puerto Rican Jew. distortion, love, and music—are shown in the three poems above. Most Nuyorican A product of the New York ghettos I have never known. poems seem to be assaults on those spaces. The poems are frequently constructed [ ...... ] as expressions of loss and regret over the passing of an old place such as Puerto Rico, I come from dirt where the cane was grown. as well as a bitter disaffection with the “new” Nuyorican surroundings. However, I am caribeña, island grown. this despair is countered with the hope of restoring an attachment with that new place—either by distance through surrealism, as Pietri’s poem shows—or by using a Spanish is in my flesh, ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips, surrogate like love or music as a way of injecting Puerto Ricans into New York space. the language of garlic and mangoes. The third moment is also described by Flores as “an awakened national Boricuas. As Boricuas come from the isle of Manhattan. consciousness, or consciousness of nationality,” in which Nuyorican cultural awareness I am not African. has its distinct foundation in a national group (Flores 191). This is the acknowledgement Africa waters the roots of my tree, but I cannot return. of Puerto Rico as a real space and a major source of the poetics for the Puerto Ricans [ ...... ] in New York creating those poems. However, the movement from this third moment I am not Taína. of reengagement and national affirmation to the fourth lies in the idea that, ultimately, I am a leaf of that ancient tree, Nuyorican identity rests on those persons living in a diaspora. Outside the nation, [ ...... ] and finding identity on that concept, the branching out in moment four is finally the evacuation, or rather, loosening of the term Nuyorican itself. I am not European Europe lies in me but I have no home there. outside (:Diaspora, Puerto Ricos) [ ...... ] Mariposa, another poet in the Nuyorican tradition, performed in Berkeley, We are new. California, as part of a tour called Borikua Fest. After finishing her series of poems, History made us. she talked to the audience, saying how happy she was to be back in the Bay Area, We will not eat ourselves up inside anymore. proud to see so many Puerto Ricans in attendance. She pointed out Piri Thomas sitting in the front row, and thanked him for initiating the tradition she is following. And we are whole. (Morales in Alaoud 212) She also mentioned a list of Nuyorican poets in that tradition, including Willie Perdomo, whom she was performing with, but then added that such a name, used to And we are many. The moments that Flores encountered in Nuyorican poetry is identify many Puerto Ricans in the United States, has to be used differently now. She the formation of a community from within all the parts of the colonizing nation. then said that the term she can best think of to be inclusive of Puerto Ricans outside The four moments begin with a search for identity strictly on “national” terms. the island is “diasporican.” The first two moments of abandon and enchantment are the failures of identity on Juan Flores’ fourth moment of a Nuyorican consciousness is manifested in those terms. New York is hell, and Puerto Rico is the lost Eden. The Nuyorican Mariposa’s statement as the movement to reach out from New York. Although Flores poets could not identify with New York because of its abandonment of the Puerto focused mainly on non-Puerto Rican communities in the U.S., once the New York Ricans, nor could they accept Puerto Rico for viewing them in turn as deformed scene has been reengaged, the fourth moment asserts a bigger extension of Puerto Ricans. These two abandonments are the result of not being wholly communal identity, including other U.S. Puerto Ricans. The fourth moment “national” either on the U.S. side or on the Puerto Rico side. After the return to the remembers the various diasporic traditions constituting “Puerto Ricanness.” Nuyorican community in the third moment, the movement toward identity then The fourth moment lies in accepting the many points of origin and departures of shifts outside such terms. Although originating in a national space and moving from the Puerto Rican community. It is looking at both aquí and allá as critical and that, Nuyorican poets understand they are Puerto Ricans. Nuyorican poetry in multiple sites of culture that enable a different kind of communal identity. Flore’s fourth moment reveals that the total Puerto Rican communal is found in Rosario and Aurora Levins Morales, two women who are not necessarily Nuyorican the diaspora. Thus, the last stage is not an integration with U.S. national identity, but U.S. Puerto Rican, speak most clearly of this diasporic awakening. nor a rejection of the possibility of Puerto Rico as a nation, but rather the enabling of community that subverts such forms that divides Puerto Ricans (los de aquí or allá). Rosario and Aurora Morales Because of the historical fact of colonialism, the movement to moment four shows “Ending Poem” that U.S. Puerto Rican poets have found a way to imagine community outside of “nation,” rather than as “nation within a nation.” Using Foucault, Chela Sandoval A child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads. argued in The Methodology of the Oppressed, that the “‘political, ethical, social, and I am Puerto Rican. I am U.S. American. philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the I am New York Manhattan and the Bronx. state, and from the state’s institutions, but to liberate us . . . from the type of [ ...... ] individualization which is linked to the state.” It will require, she continues,

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that we “promote new forms of subjectivities through the refusal of the kind of Say: Adjuntas and individuality which has been imposed on us. Citizen-subjects have become so [ ...... ] surrounded and trapped by our own histories of domination, fear, pain, hatred, We are still waiting and hierarchy that the strategic adversary under postmodern times has become have not fallen (Hernández Red Beans 82) our own sense of self” (163). This means in part that in constructing communities in the time of globalization requires identifications that undermine our differences on national terms. Nuyorican poets show that Puerto Rico’s own decolonization needs all diasporicans to challenge patriarchal, global-capital constructions. REFERENCES Acosta-Belen, Edna. 1992. Beyond Island Boundaries: Ethnicity, Gender, and Cultural ’s Revitalization in Nuyorican Literature. Callaloo: 979–98. “The Final Eulogy” Algarín, Miguel. 1974. Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Words and Feelings. New York: Morrow. remove the padlock ______, and Bob Holman, eds. 1994. Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf . New York: from the womb Henry Holt. let new subjects be born Augenbraum, Harold and Margarite Fernández Olmos. 1997. The Latino Reader. New before you bore York: Houghton Mifflin. the ocean to death (Pietri Puerto Rican Obituary 106) Barradas, Efraín. 1979. De lejos en sueños verla: visión mítica de Puerto Rico en la poesía neorrican. Revista Chicano-Rique a 7(3): 46–56. The chain of representation—space-culture-identity—encountered in Nuyorican Cienfuegos, Lucky. 1994. Piss Side Street. In Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf , poetry leading to the fourth moment signifies the possibility of a movement that is eds. Miguel Algarín and Bob Holman, 312–3. New York: Henry Holt. able to recognize the space people share outside of the nation. To answer the Espada, Martín. 1993. City of Coughing and Dead Radiators. New York: Norton. Where are we? Who are we? Where are we? question had been to answer is engaged ______. 1996. Imagine the Angels of Bread. New York: Norton. through the first assumption—that you define yourself with a nation. In contrast, Esterrich, Carmelo. 1998. Home and the Ruins of Language: Victor Hernández Cruz and the third and fourth moments propose that you see the people as living in a space Miguel Algarín’s Nuyorican Poetry. MELUS Fall: 43. without fixing an identity within the colonizer’s space. Like Espada’s boy, who identifies with what he takes in through his mouth (Coca-Cola or coco frío), Esteves, Sandra María. 1974. For Tito. In Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of Puerto Rican the poets identified through what they took in with their eyes. Ultimately, seeing the Words and Feelings, ed. Miguel Algarín, 133. New York: Morrow. Puerto Ricans living their lives within the diaspora promotes hope, transformation, Flores, Juan. 1993. Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity. Houston: Arte Público Press. and solidarity. In the fourth moment, Where are we? is no longer “not Puerto Rico, Hernández Cruz, Victor. 1976. Tropicalization. New York: Reed, Cannon, and Johnson. therefore lost.” The where of space is now infused with hope. ______. 1991. Red Beans: Poems. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. Víctor Hernández Cruz ______. 1997. Panoramas. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. “Good Waters” Laviera, Tato. 1985. AmeR can. Houston: Arté Público Press. ______. 1985. Enclave. Houston: Arté Público Press. We do not claim to be of the fallen Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. 11th ed. The tradition of Agueybaná was not Oxford: Blackwell. Just within the material Lutwack, Leonard. 1984. The Role of Place in Literature. New York: Syracuse University Press. It was not just in the people physical Pietri, Pedro. 1973. Puerto Rican Obituary. New York: Monthly Review Press. In rhythm it is what still dances ______. 1994. Wet Hand on Dry Dreams. In Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf , In gene Plazas eds. Miguel Algarín and Bob Holman, 341–7. New York: Henry Holt. [ ...... ] Piñero, Miguel. 1985. La Bodega Sold Dreams. Houston: Arté Público Press. Even such that comes to your tongue Sandoval, Chela. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of That too is there Minnesota Press. No matter what or where Acá or Allá For conflict nuts

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