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Nuyorican and Diasporican Literature and Culture E Nuyorlcan and Diasporican Uterature and Culture Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature Nuyorican and Diasporican Literature and Culture e Jorge Duany Subject: American Literature, Literary Studies (20th Centwy Onward) Online Publication Date: jan 2018 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.387 Summary and K.eywords The term "Nuyorican" (in its various spellings) refers to the cornbination of "Puerto Rican" and "NewYorker." The sobriquet became a popular shorthand for the Puerto Rican exodus to the United States after World War II. Since the mid-1960s, the neologism became associated with the literary and artistic movement known as "Nuyorican." The movement was institutionalized with the 1973 founding ofthe Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower East Side of Manhattan by Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero. Much of Nuyorican literature featured frequent autobiographical references, the predominance of the English language, street slang, realism, parodie humor, subversiva politics, and a ruptura with the island's literary models. Since the 1980s, the literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora has been characterized as "post-Nuyorican" or "Diasporican" to capture sorne of its stylistic and thematic shifts, including a movement away from urban blight. violence, colloquialism, and radicalism. The Bronx-born poet Maria Teresa ("Mariposa") Fernández coined the term "Diasporican" in a celebrated 1993 poem. Contemporary texts written by Puerto Ricans in the United States also reflect their growing dispersa! from their initial concentration in New York City. Keywords: Puerto Rican diaspora, Puerto Ricans in New York. second-generation immigrants, retum migration to Puerto Rico Pago 1 of22 PRINTED PROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LITERATURE (literature.oxfordre.com). (e) Oxford University Press USA. 2016. All Rights ReseiVed. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited. Please see applicable Prtvacy Policy and Legal Notice (for details see Prtvacy Pollcy). date: 01 March 2018 Nuyorican and Diasporican Uterature and Culture The Origins of the Term "Nuyorican" The historical origins of the tenn "Nuyorican" date back to the Puerto Rican exodus to the United S tates after World War II. Island-based author Guillermo Cotto-Thorner wrote the first novel about this exodus in Spanish, Trópico en Manhattan (1951), including a bilingual Spanish-English glossary entitled Neorkismos. Puerto Rican migration reached massive proportions between 1945 and 1965, a period that became known as the "Great Migration" from the island. Net migration between the island and the U.S. mainland peaked at more than 650,000 persons during this phase. The displacement of a large share of Puerto Rico's population occurred as the island underwent swift socioeconomic transfonnations under the government-run program of industrialization, dubbed "Operation Bootstrap." By encouraging the establishment of faetones near the island's main cities and neglecting the agricultura! sector, this program pushed thousands of rural workers to urban areas, both on the island and abroad. The first literary usage of the neologism "Neo-Rican" appeared in Jaime Carrero's slim volume ofbilingual poetry,]et neorriqueño/Neo-Rican]etliner(1964). Carrero's text is staged in an airplane as a metaphorical space between two territories, languages, and cultures-those of Puerto Rico and the United States . His constant use of code switching between English and Spanish (popularly known as "Spanglish") prefigurad much of the later Nuyorican poetry. Another precursor of the Nuyorican movement was Piri Thomas's classic memoir about a black Puerto Rican growing up in New York, Down These Mean Streets (1967).1 According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, a Nuyorican is "a person of Puerto Rican birth or descent who is a current or fonner resident of New York City." The Oxford Dictionary broadens the scope to "a Puerto Rican living in the United States, especially in New York City." Multiple variants of the toponym or demonym, including the English word "Newyorican" and the Spanish forros niuyorrican and nuyorriqueño, have been proposed to capture the hybrid identities of Puerto Rican migrants. They all imply a basic geographic, linguistic, and cultural split between Puerto Ricans living on the island and in the United States.2 The spelling of the tenn "Nuyorican" became the preferred one after Miguel Algarin and Miguel Piñero edited their anthology of Nuyorican poetry in 1975. They emphasized the creation of a literary language out of the everyday mixture between English and Spanish among working-class Puerto Ricans in New York City. Algarin and Piñero also elaborated a Nuyorican aesthetic, based on the multiple intersections among written texts, spoken words, and perfonning bodies. In addition to its literary dimensions, the Nuyorican movement had a visual arts component, especially after the establishment of El Museo del Barrio in 1969, the Taller Boricua in 1970, and the emergence of severa! generations of Puerto Rican artists in New York City, including Rafael Tufiño (b. 1922- d. 2008), Page2of 22 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA. LITERATURE (literature.oxfordre.com). (e) Oxford University Press USA. 2016. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited. Please see applicable Privacy Pollcy and Legal Notice (for details see Privacy Pollcy). date: 01 March 2018 Nuyorlcan and Dlasporlcan Uterature and Culture Marcos Dimas (b. 1943), Fernando Salicrup (b. 1946-d. 2015), Nitza Tufiño (b. 1949), Juan Sánchez (b. 1954), and Pepón Osorio (b. 1955).3 Pllge 3or22 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCWPEDIA. LITERATURE (llterature.oxfordre.com). (e) Oxford University Press USA, 2016. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; com.mercial use ls strictly prohibited. Please see applicable Prtvacy Policy and Legal Notice (for detalls see Prtvacy Policy). date: 01 March 2018 Nuyorican and Diasporican Literature and Culture Broader Meanings of the Term Beyond its literary and artistic usage, Nuyorican became a cornmon tenn of disparagement among residents of Puerto Rico, both among members of the intellectual elite and the popular sectors. In the 1960s Puerto Rican scholars began to approach the diaspora with trepidation. The work of anthropologist Eduardo Seda Bonilla is typical of a nationalist stance toward Puerto Rican migrants in the United States. In a series of influential essays originally published in Spanish during the 1970s, Seda Bonilla posed the "problem" of the "assimilation" of Puerto Ricans into U.S. society and concluded that second-generation immigrants (whom he called niuyonicans and later "Neo-Ricans") had practically lost their cultural roots.4 Seda Bonilla was especially disturbed by the erosion of the Spanish language among Nuyoricans, as well as the negative impact of U. S. racism on Puerto Rican culture. In his original formulation of the problem, Seda Bonilla dismissed the idea that Nuyoricans who did not speak Spanish were still Puerto Ricans. For him, "the Niuyonican is nowadays the archetypal man without a homeland. "5 From this perspective, migrants to the U. S. mainland threatened the survival of the Puerto Rican people and announced a "requiem for its culture."6 Nuyoricans were therefore represented asan obstacle to the consolidation of a national consciousness and the growth of the independence movement on the island. Until recently, most scholars based in Puerto Rico located Nuyoricans outside the territorial and symbolic boundaries of their own national identity.7 Island intellectuals usually considered Nuyoricans to have an identity crisis orto have assimilated into U. S. culture. In either case, they generally excluded migrants from the Puerto Rican nationalist discourse as hybrid, dangerous, and contaminated outsiders.8 The main issue has been the gradual substitution of the English language for the Spanish vernacular, especially among second-generation Puerto Ricans in the United States. For instance, the renowned política! scientist Manuel Maldonado Denis claimed that "our Puerto Rican brothers in the United States-above all, the more recent generations-lack basic proficiency in both Spanish and English ... Perhaps they would be better described as 'no-linguals' instead of bilingual or monolingual."9 In effect, Nuyoricans were often disregarded as "bilingual illiterates." E ven today, many local scholars and creative writers deride Puerto Ricans in the diaspora because they often cannot speak Spanish fluently or follow traditional Puerto Rican customs. Nuyoricans have responded to such criticisms by redefining Puerto Rican national identity away from a sole reliance on the Spanish language to incorporate monolingual English speakers with family and emotional tiesto the island.10 In the U.S. mainland, younger Puerto Ricans-especially those born and raised abroad-have inexorably adopted English as their dominant language. Following a well-established pattern in the United States, Spanish dominance is rapidly receding among second- and third­ generation immigrants. However, many stateside Puerto Ricans are still fluent in Spanish and English and often alternate between the two languages. Thus, Puerto Ricans display Page 4 of22 PRINTED PROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA. UfERATURE (literature.oxfordre.com). (e) Oxford University Press USA, 2016. A11 Rights Resetved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited. Please see applicable Prtvacy Policy and Legal Notice (for details see Prtvacy Policy). date: 01 March
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