Criticism: Expatriate Caribbean Literature
[In the following essay, Luis provides an overview of Spanish-Caribbean literature written in the United States, briefly discussing the works of such authors as Reinaldo Arenas, José Martí, and others.]
Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States is a relatively new field in literary history and criticism. In recent years, Spanish American literature written in the United States has become a reality because of writers who, for economic or political reasons, left their countries to reside in the United States. Authors such as Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba) and Sylvia Molloy (Argentina) write about their homelands; but, as their stay in the United States becomes more permanent, these and other authors such as Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina) and Carlos Guillermo Wilson (Panama) tend to document their experiences in a new environment. They are contributing to an existing body of Hispanic American literature written by Chicanos such as Rodolfo Anaya and Gary Soto, Puerto Ricans such as Nicholasa Mohr and Tato Laviera, and Cuban Americans such as Oscar Hijuelos and Ricardo Pau-Llosa, who write and live in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Newark, which have now acquired a distinctly Hispanic character.
Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States has profited from the publicity received by the so-called Boom of the Latin American novel, which during the 1960s brought Latin American literature to the attention of a world reader. At the same time, Hispanic Caribbean narrative written in the United States appeals to a wide audience which includes English-speaking readers living on the North American continent. Political events have helped to promote aspects of this literature. During the turbulent decade of the 1960s, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and Young Lords Party drew attention to the plight of Blacks and Hispanics in the United States. Hispanic Caribbean college students, many of them the sons and daughters of immigrants, were instrumental in creating and developing Latin American or Puerto Rican Studies programs throughout New York and other northeastern states. In search of an identity, they demanded relevant courses about life in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, and other Spanish-speaking countries and, equally important, about their own experiences in the United States. The newly created courses were different from traditional offerings insofar as they were taught from a sympathetic point of view. The enthusiastic efforts of college students on US campuses were paralleled by community activists and organizers who sponsored events to promote ethnic awareness and artistic expressions emerging from the barrios and ghettos.
Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States can be divided by country of origin and genre, but more appropriately should be divided into two main categories. The first consists of writers who were formed and educated in their native countries and later emigrated or were forced to flee to the United States. While in the United States, they continued to write in the vernacular mostly about themes pertaining to their island of provenance. Some traveled to the United States for brief periods while others stayed longer. Regardless of the reasons for going to the United States or length of time spent there, the writers' presence in the United States has had a lasting effect on them and their works. The second category includes writers who were either born or raised in the United States, and who for the most part write in English. As a group, they write an ethnic literature which responds to concerns about their isolation within a dominant culture that has denied them an identity and access to North American society. For these writers, their parents' country of origin is a distant memory. These Hispanic American or Latino authors write about Hispanic Caribbeans living on the US mainland and their works are at the vanguard of a new literary movement which is both Hispanic and North American and is helping to bring the two literatures and cultures together.
Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States is not new. It began as a literature of exile which can be traced to the early and mid nineteenth century, when Cuban and Puerto Rican intellectuals and writers, seeking political asylum from the Spanish colonial government, traveled to and resided mainly in the northeastern part of the United States. New York became the main center of operations against Spanish dominion over the islands. Newspapers and journals contain the political and literary aspirations of generations of intellectuals fighting for their countries' independence, including figures like Cirilo Villaverde (1812-1894), Enrique Piñeyro (1839-1911), and José Martí (1853-1895), of Cuba; and Ramón Betances (1827-1898), Eugenio María de Hostos (1839-1903), Francisco Gonzalo (Pachín) Marín (1863-1897), and Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938), of Puerto Rico. In the nineteenth century New York emerged as an important intellectual and publishing center for Hispanic Caribbean authors.
The number of Hispanics traveling to the United States increased after the Spanish-American War of 1898, and during the first decades of the twentieth century. After the Foraker Law of 1900, which made Puerto Rico a territory of the United States, and in particular the Jones Act of 1917, which gave Puerto Ricans US citizenship, Puerto Ricans began to leave their native island in large numbers to reside in New York and to work mainly in the tobacco industry. Later, after Operation Bootstrap was put into effect, during the 1940s and 1950s, they migrated in still greater numbers and were employed in New York's garment district. These Puerto Ricans were soon joined by a large wave of Cubans who left their homeland shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. This group of professionally trained middle-class exiles sought refuge in San Juan but also in Miami, Newark, and New York City. Cubans arrived in three migratory waves: first, from 1959 to 1962; second, from 1965 to 1972; and third, in 1980, as a result of the Mariel boatlift, when they added to a notable presence of Hispanics in the United States, which is increasing by the day. Dominicans are the newest members of a Caribbean population living in the United States. Their numbers have risen as they began to leave their country concomitantly with the first two waves of Cubans, a period which corresponded with the end of the Trujillo dictatorship in 1961 and the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that the Dominicans became a noticeable presence in Hispanic communities. Like the Puerto Ricans, Dominicans fled their homeland to escape declining economic conditions.
Cuban writers were among the first to migrate to the United States; they were at the forefront of their country's liberation movement. José María Heredia (1803-1839) was the first important Hispanic Caribbean writer forced into exile. A leader in the “Orden de los Caballeros Racionales,” a branch of the separatist society “Los Soles y Rayos de Bolívar,” Heredia was accused of conspiracy in 1823 and, with the help of friends, fled to Boston and lived in New York and Philadelphia. New York became Heredia's temporary home, allowing him to continue his literary career. Two years later, at the invitation of President Guadalupe Victoria, Heredia left for Mexico, a country similar to his own, with a warm climate and the familiar Spanish language. However, before leaving New York, Heredia wrote and published his Poesías, which placed him among the leading lyric and Romantic poets of Cuban and Spanish American literatures. This collection includes his most important poem of the period, “Oda al Niágara,” a meditation on the New York waterfalls, the poet's own passion, and the yearned-for palm trees of his native Cuba. En route to Mexico, Heredia wrote “Himno del desterrado,” a “hymn” about his country, his family, but also about the detestable colonial situation in Cuba. “Himno del desterrado” became a source of inspiration to other Cubans living in exile.
Other Cuban activists soon followed Heredia. Cirilo Villaverde was forced into exile for his political beliefs and activism. A member of the Del Monte literary circle, Villaverde had produced a considerable body of literature before leaving Cuba and becoming one of the first notable Latin American narrators to seek political asylum in New York in 1849. In 1882 he completed and published in that city the definitive edition of his anti-slavery novel Cecilia Valdés. This novel, one of the most important works of nineteenth-century Spanish American literature, would not have been written had Villaverde stayed in Cuba, where slavery was an integral part of the Spanish colonial system. Like most exile-writers, Villaverde's life and literary production can be divided into two parts: his formative years in Cuba, where he published most of his fiction, including two early versions of his Cecilia Valdés, and his exile, where he wrote political essays and completed the definitive version of the novel. His later writings include a posthumous homage to General Narciso López, for whom Villaverde worked and who was captured and executed in Cuba in 1851. The manuscript was published under the title To the Public (General López, the Cuban Patriot) in New York, in 1850. He also drafted a response to José Antonio Saco's independence ideas, which he entitled El señor Saco con respecto a la revolución de Cuba, published in New York in 1852. In addition, he contributed articles to many magazines and newspapers and became editor of La Verdad in 1853, El Espejo Masónico and La Ilustración Americana from 1865 to 1873, El Espejo from 1874 to 1894, and El Tribunal Cubano in 1878.
At the outset of the Cuban Ten Years' War of Independence (1868-1878), Villaverde renewed his interest in politics, with a slightly different but significant change. Rather than the annexation of Cuba by the United States, he now favored Saco's position, seeking total independence of the island. In a document addressed to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, entitled La revolución de Cuba vista desde Nueva York, Villaverde warns the Cuban patriot of the US intention not to help the rebel forces. By supporting Céspedes and other rebels, Villaverde explicitly embraced the anti-slavery cause. The Constituent Convention of the Guáimaro Assembly, of April 12, 1869, made a provision for the emancipation of slaves in Cuba. Although Villaverde lived to see the liberation of slaves in 1886, he did not witness the events which would lead to the independence of his country.
Villaverde's separation from Cuba, his political concerns, literary freedom, and events unfolding in the United States, in particular the emancipation of slaves in 1865, encouraged him to rewrite his most important novel. The last version of Cecilia Valdés is a denunciation of slavery and the Spanish colonial government. Villaverde situates the main action between 1823 and 1832; that is, within the historical context of the corrupt administration of General Francisco Vives. Yet Villaverde also reminds his readers of the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844 in which hundreds of free Blacks and slaves, including artists and writers, were put to death.
José Martí is certainly Cuba's most important literary and political exile. After his second expulsion from Cuba and except for brief periods, Martí resided in New York from 1880 to 1895. Like other intellectuals in exile, Martí continued to write, publishing the chronicles “Cartas de Nueva York; o, escenas norteamericanas” in La Opinión Nacional of Caracas, La Nación of Buenos Aires, El Partido Liberal of Mexico, and La América of New York, from 1881 to 1891. Martí also wrote for other New York papers, such as The Hour and The Sun. In New York, Martí expressed his political beliefs and made plans for Cuban independence. In 1892, Martí became a delegate to the Partido Revolucionario Cubano. He held other political positions including Consul of Argentina, Paraguay, and representative of Uruguay to the American International Monetary Commission in Washington, DC. In 1894, Martí completed the Plan de Fernandina, which outlined the invasion of Cuba in three expeditions, to be coordinated with internal uprisings.
Martí's “Carta de Nueva York,” dated August 12, 1886, is addressed to the “Señor Director de La República.” The letter refers to a series of New York publications which commented on the wonderful opportunities available to private capital in Honduras, but also to another publication which discouraged it. According to Martí, the country of Honduras was vindicated by another article written by the President of the Central American Workers Union. As a citizen of America in the broadest sense, Martí assumed his patriotic duties and offered his advice to the emerging republic. Martí begins his letter by referring to the sovereignty and natural richness of American soil and the need to work the land. He suggests that jobs and education are the means to assure liberty. Martí supports legitimate investment in Honduras and, with this in mind, he does a close reading of a pamphlet published by the Compañía de Mejora y Navegación del Río Aguán, a model to be applauded. He refers to the company's detailed and public intention to exploit certain natural resources such as lumber, agriculture, and mining and describes the project, which includes cost, profits, and benefits to the host country. The company even desires to return the River Aguán to its original path.
A prolific writer, Martí's most important literary works were written and published in New York; they include his poetry, Ismaelillo, Versos sencillos, the essay “Nuestra América” (1891), and the novel Amistad Funesta, and, from 1878 to 1882, he wrote many of the poems included in his posthumous Versos libres. With Ismaelillo, which contains fifteen brief poems dedicated to his son, and his prologue to Juan Antonio Bonalde's El poema de Niágara, Martí initiates Modernismo [Modernism] in Spanish America, a literary movement later associated with the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. Martí's poetry came into fruition with his Versos sencillos, a sincere expression of emotions related to his homeland, Nature, and mankind. His Versos libres, particularly “Amor de ciudad grande” which refers to New York City, represents a period of transition and confusion where he highlights content over form. These poems convey strength and energy which pour from the poet's pen and describe universal symbols. Unlike Versos libres, Versos sencillos is filled with simplicity and sincerity, with love and reflection about past and friends. Two other collections, Versos de amor and Flores del destierro, published posthumously in 1930 and 1933, respectively, correspond to the period of Versos libres. Martí's presence in the United States allowed him to carry out his political ideas and to understand his adopted homeland. In his much publicized essay, “Nuestra América,” Martí warns the nations south of the border about their powerful neighbor to the north. The political and literary writings of Martí, Heredia, and Villaverde were profoundly influenced by their exile to the United States.
New York was also a haven for Puerto Rican activists. By the time Martí arrived in New York, Eugenio María de Hostos had already left his mark there, having lived in the city in 1870 and 1874. He would return later in 1898, and with Julio J. Henna and Manuel Zeno Gandía would publish The Case of Porto Rico (sic) (1899), a document in defense of Puerto Rican independence. Although they did not coincide in New York, Hostos and Martí shared the same revolutionary spirit and belonged to the same Partido Revolucionario Cubano. In New York, Hostos was the unofficial editor of La revolución for the Comité Republicano Puertorriqueño and called on Puerto Ricans to work for independence. Noting the division between those who supported independence and those who favored annexation, he wrote a manifesto calling for all Puerto Ricans to join the fight for independence. Later he became a leader among workers in the newly formed Club de Artesanos and promoted his ideas against annexation. Hostos's political ideas are gathered in his Diario.
In New York, Martí met many Puerto Rican intellectuals, including Francisco Gonzalo (Pachín) Marín who, like the Cuban poet, attended La Literaria, a Hispanic American literary society. During this period of his exile, Pachín Marín wrote a series of articles about New York, published the newspaper El Postillón and, under the influence of Béquer but also Martí, he wrote his Romances. Like Martí, Pachín Marín worked for independence; he participated in the Liga de Artesanos, was secretary of the Club Pinos Nuevos, and in Cuba gave his life for Cuban independence.
New York, an important theme in later Puerto Rican migration literature, was already visible in the works of Manuel Zeno Gandía (1855-1930), one of Puerto Rico's best-known authors. North Americans are present throughout his works, but New York City becomes his main concern in an inconclusive work Nueva York, the fifth of a series of chronicles entitled Crónicas de un mundo enfermo, about the Puerto Rican migration to the United States. Needless to say, this work had a profound impact on future generations of writers who developed the theme of migration in Puerto Rican literature.
In the twentieth century, Cubans continued to flee political persecution. The Machado dictatorship resulted in the exile of two of Cuba's most important narrators, Lino Novás Calvo (1905-1973) and Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). Unlike their nineteenth-century counterparts, they did not live in the United States, but in Europe: Novás Calvo traveled to Madrid as a correspondent for Orbe, whose owners also published El Diario de la Marina, and Carpentier, after being detained by Machado's henchmen, fled to Paris where he contributed to the surrealist movement and even participated in its disintegration. During the same period, Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989) lived in Cuba but also traveled abroad. Guillén made two brief but important trips to the United States, which influenced some of his poetry. The first was a train ride across the United States, from Mexico to Canada, in 1937; the second was a two-week excursion to New York on his way to Moscow. Guillén was familiar with the racial situation in the United States, but he gained greater insight from his conversations with North Americans, such as Lindem Henry and Lulu B. White, whom he met when he was a delegate to the Congress of Peace in 1949. It was in his travels to the United States that he was able to confirm what he had already known. In an article “De Nueva York a Moscú, pasando por París,” published in Bohemia in 1949, Guillén describes impressions that would not fade easily from his memory. He writes about the Harlem of luxurious cabarets but also of the misery in which many Blacks lived. Although “Elegía a Emmett Till” was not written until 1956, it captures a part of the Americana Guillén experienced on his visits to the United States. Similar to Neruda's interrogation of the Wilkamayu or Heredia's questioning of Niagara Falls, Guillén speaks to the mighty Mississippi about the death of the black boy. His experience would also serve him when writing other poems including one about black activist Angela Davis.
Batista's dictatorship, from 1952 to 1958, produced a small number of young exile writers for the United States. Incipient authors such as Roberto Fernández Retamar (b. 1930), Edmundo Desnoes (b. 1930), Pablo Armando Fernández (b. 1930), and Ambrosio Fornet (b. 1932) lived and worked in New York, where they furthered their literary careers. For example, Pablo Armando Fernández's second book of poems, Nuevos poemas, with an introduction by Eugenio Florit, was published in New York in 1956; Desnoes was the editor of Visión, from 1956 to 1959; and Fernández Retamar was a visiting professor at Yale University in 1957. That same year, Fornet was a student at New York University. Of the post Second World War period, Eugenio Florit (b. 1903) is perhaps the best-known writer to occupy a position at a major university in the United States. He arrived in New York in 1940 to work for the Cuban Consulate and in 1945 he joined the faculty at Barnard College of Columbia University. Florit promoted Spanish American literature with anthologies and works of scholarship, and with his own poetry which he wrote but did not publish in the United States. Unlike the poetry written in Cuba by members of Orígenes (1944-1956), his poems are devoid of rhetoric and seek to capture the essence of poetic language. One of his best poems is dedicated to New York, “Los poetas solos de Manhattan.” This period includes his Conversación a mi padre, Asonante final y otros poemas, and Siete poemas.
If the younger voluntary exiles returned to Cuba after Fidel Castro's victory to work in the construction of a new society, the same event also produced another wave of exiles, mainly to San Juan, Miami, and New York City, but also to other cities throughout the United States. Every Cuban writer living during the time of the Castro government would be affected in one way or another by Castro's politics. Lino Novás Calvo became the first and most important writer to leave Castro's Cuba; he sought asylum in the Colombian Embassy in 1960, traveled to New York City, and in 1967 joined the faculty at Syracuse University. He taught there until he suffered a stroke in 1973, from which he never recovered.
Novás Calvo acquired literary prominence during the 1930s and 1940s with the novel El negrero (1933) and the collections of stories La luna nona y otros cuentos (1942) and Cayo Canas (1946). In exile, Novás Calvo continued to write in the United States and, like Villaverde, he used his literary and political freedom to denounce events in Cuba. Of the first six stories he published in Bohemia Libre, from 1960 to 1963, five narrate events in contemporary Cuba. For example, “Un buchito de café,” “El milagro,” and “Fernández al paredón,” describe the unjust sufferings of innocent people at the hands of supporters of the Revolution.
In 1970 Novás Calvo published Maneras de contar, the only collection of short stories from his exile period. Of the eighteen stories, thirteen of them were written in the United States and narrate events in the Revolution; the other five are taken from his earlier collections and include “La noche de Ramón Yendía” and “Aquella noche salieron los muertos,” two stories which date back to the Machado years. Novás Calvo's first exile stories were flawed, but he regained the mastery noted in his earlier tales after coming to terms with his condition as an exile. In this second period, Novás Calvo de-emphasizes the anti-revolutionary theme and returns to earlier concerns to write, for example, “Peor que un infierno,” “El esposo invisible,” “Mi tío Antón Luna,” and “El secreto de Naciso Campana.” In spite of his renewed efforts to write fiction, Novás Calvo was unable to reach the level of recognition he had enjoyed prior to 1959. As a writer, Novás Calvo's reputation was hindered by historical events. He wrote antirevolutionary stories at a time in which the Cuban government enjoyed wide support among intellectuals in Europe, Latin America, and even in the United States, a support which lasted until the “Padilla Affair” of 1971, one year after the publication of Maneras de contar.
Perhaps one of Novás Calvo's important contributions to Cuban exile literature written in the United States is contained in “Un bum” and “La noche que Juan tumbó a Pedro,” both written in 1964 and whose plots develop not in Cuba but in New York. They narrate the cruel reality exiles must face in the United States, one which Novás Calvo elaborated from personal experiences. The theme of Cubans as foreigners will be repeated by younger Cuban exiles—in particular, in the works of those who were either born or raised in the United States.
If Novás Calvo made an effort to keep his craft alive, other exile writers of his generation were less fortunate. Distinguished writers such as Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), who left Cuba in 1962 and is known for her treatment of Afro-Cuban themes, Enrique Labrador Ruiz (1902-1990), who abandoned the island in 1970 and is known for his imaginative novelas gaseiformes, and Carlos Montenegro (1900-1981), who sought refuge in 1959 and is remembered for his prison narratives, have faded into literary oblivion. After 1959, few younger writers left the island, the majority staying in Cuba. Of those who published in the early years of the Revolution and wrote for Lunes de Revolución, edited by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the literary supplement of the official newspaper of the July 26th Movement, Revolución, Matías Montes Huidobro (b. 1931) has remained active. A professor at the University of Hawaii, he has written literary criticism and continues to write plays such as Ojos para no ver, which describes the dictator, Castro, as a violent and enraged person. Other exile-writers such as José Sánchez-Boudy (b. 1927) have been active in promoting an anti-Castro literature.
In 1980, another wave of exiles popularly known as the “Marielitos” left Cuba during the Mariel boatlift. Established writers who had achieved recognition in revolutionary Cuba also sought asylum during this period. They included Heberto Padilla (b. 1933), José Triana (b. 1931), César Leante (b. 1928), Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), and Antonio Benítez Rojo (b. 1931). In comparison to their literary production in Cuba, this group of exile-writers has published little in their respective genres. Economic imperatives have forced them to devote themselves to other intellectual work, such as publishing and teaching. Of these writers, Arenas, Padilla, and Benítez Rojo reside in the United States, the latter two employed by New York University and Amherst College, respectively. Benítez Rojo has re-edited works previously published in Cuba and has shifted his interest from fiction to criticism. He published La isla que se repite, a poststructuralist approach to Caribbean culture, in which he develops the scientific ideas associated with the theory of Chaos and applies them to literature. Within the complexity of this sociocultural region, order and disorder coexist. In La isla que se repite, Benítez Rojo studies the plantation system as central for understanding the Caribbean. The plantation has affected all aspects of life and is repeated in the various islands and other parts of Latin America. La isla que se repite is a book that will find a place among such great works as Fernando Ortiz's Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), Ramiro Guerra's Azúcar y población en las Antillas (1927), and Manuel Moreno Fraginals's El ingenio (1978).
Padilla, a poet, published En mi jardín pastan los héroes (1981), a novel written in and smuggled out of Cuba. While in the United States, Padilla wrote La mala memoria, a testimonial pertaining to events surrounding the “Padilla Affair” in which he states for the record his version of the unfolding of political events in Cuba. Padilla has given much of his time to editing Linden Lane Magazine, based in New Jersey, which publishes the works of exile writers.
Reinaldo Arenas, who having tested positive for the HIV virus committed suicide, was the only writer from this group who remained very active and his works have placed him among the leading narrators of Latin American literature. After his arrival in the United States, Arenas founded the magazine and publishing house Mariel and published a novel written in Cuba, Otra vez el mar (1982). His work in exile included an epic poem, El central, a play, Persecución: cinco piezas de teatro experimental, a collection of essays, Necesidad de libertad: testimonio de un intelectual disidente, and two novels, Arturo, la estrella más brillante and La loma del Angel. Like many Cuban exile-writers, Arenas was critical of the Castro government. His political position was most explicit in Necesidad de libertad. Before his death, Arenas published two other works of fiction—El portero, which takes place in New York and describes the protagonist's life in the city, and Viaje a La Habana, which gathers three novelettes, each about a different Cuban exile who returns to the island—and two collections of poems Voluntad de vivir manifestándose, in which he collects poems written in the last two decades, and Leprosorio: (trilogía poética). He also left four manuscripts which have been published posthumously, three of which are narratives: El asalto [The Assault] and El color del verano [The Color of Summer], a collection of short stories Adios a mamá, and the autobiography Antes que anochezca [Before Night Falls], in which the author refers to his literary talents and sexual concerns.
Arenas's La loma del Angel is a rewriting of Cecilia Valdés. The life and works of one author recall those of the other. Both Villaverde and Arenas opposed their respective governments when each lived in Cuba. For their political beliefs, both Arenas and Villaverde were imprisoned in Cuban jails and escaped from the island, seeking refuge in the United States. Both authors rewrote and published their versions of Cecilia Valdés while in the United States. Arenas completed his novel almost one century after Villaverde published the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés. Finally, both Arenas and Villaverde died in New York.
In his novel, Arenas joins Villaverde in denouncing slavery and uses the incestuous relationship between the unsuspecting brother and sister to narrate other cultural and political concerns. Just as Villaverde places his narrative time during the corrupt Vives government (1823-1832), but also breaks with it to call attention to the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844, Arenas likewise abandons the chronology of his novel to recall a contemporary time before and during the Cuban Revolution. By including in his narration Lydia Cabrera, José Lezama Lima, and Father Angel Gaztelu, Arenas refers the reader to the 1940s and 1950s and to the periodical Orígenes which Lezama edited. Before and after the triumph of Castro, Lezama and other group members were accused of stressing the aesthetic over the political. In Chapter 11, Arenas identifies Lezama as a slave poet, reminding us of the slave poet Juan Francisco Manzano's status during the first third of the nineteenth century and the censorship of anti-slavery works.
By including more than one narrator, Arenas's novel decentralizes the authorial voice, and opens the text to multiple interpretations. In so doing, he opposes all monolithic and unidimensional discourses of fiction and history and challenges the view that functionaries of the Castro government are the authorized interpreters of Cuban history and culture. For Arenas, Cuban culture does not develop and flourish exclusively in nineteenth-century Cuba, but exists outside the island, in the works of Villaverde, Martí, and himself, authors who lived and wrote in exile in New York. In Necesidad de libertad Arenas states that the real Cuban literature is written outside Cuba.
Of importance to this project is Arenas's El portero, a novel which takes place in New York, specifically in a private apartment building in an upper-class neighborhood in Manhattan. The protagonist, Juan, is a Cuban refugee who arrived in New York as a result of the Mariel boatlift and finds a job as a doorman. Juan is an exceptional doorman and does anything to please his tenants, including having sex with men and women alike, but is also interested in talking to them about a metaphorical door. Through Juan's exile perspective, the reader sees life in New York (or perhaps in the United States), represented by rich and eccentric individuals who pay more attention to their pets than to Juan's (human) kindness. Money is not the only factor which produces rudeness and selfishness since the building's superintendent, who is not of the same economic means as the occupants, is also another conspirator against the doorman.
If Part i of the novel describes the people Juan meets on a daily basis, Part ii centers on the pets and other animals who are aware of Juan's plight and talk to him about theirs. At a prearranged meeting each animal describes to Juan its own experience and persecution. Like Juan, they are prisoners of men, in general, and their owners, in particular, and conspire with Juan to gain their independence.
This, Arenas's latest novel is a denunciation of the social and political conditions in Cuba which caused him, the doorman, and others to flee from the island. In Cuba, the doorman “lived seventeen years in hunger and humiliation under the communist system and had fled on a boat” (p. 47). In addition, the novel is also a coming to terms with Arenas's exile condition in a foreign land. Juan and the animals speak of their marginal position in society and their desire to seek unity amongst themselves and independence for all. “All who have spoken wish to distance themselves from man, or at least, live in a manner independent from him, and even, if it were possible, to use him as one uses a slave” (p. 113).
In the end, the animals free Juan from an insane asylum; he had been accused of “magnetic ventriloquism” since no one but him believed that animals could speak. He and the animals flee, first to the Mid-West, then to California, later to the Equator, and finally to the sea looking for the magic mountain, a symbol of independence, a magic door which Juan guards. He becomes a St. Peter guarding the door to Heaven, but perhaps more like a bodhisattva who decides not to enter Nirvana in order to guide others.
El portero, which reflects Arenas's own experiences in New York, is sprinkled with English words and references to real characters, some of whom live in the city. It is narrated by a collective “we” who were once Cuban refugees and know every aspect of Juan's life. As a group, they echo the CDR, the Committee in Defense of the Revolution, a neighborhood spy network to “defend” Castro's government, but they live in the United States. The narrator is aware, and informs the reader, of Juan's activities. In the end, the narrative voice recognizes the importance of the movement for liberation of animals and inanimate objects, and also understands Juan's usefulness: he symbolizes hope and can mediate between them and humans.
Antes que anochezca—the title refers to the author's need to write before the evening arrived—is Arenas's best work. Arenas recounts his life in revolutionary Cuba from the perspective of death; he was very sick when he wrote his autobiography and died shortly after completing it. Death is ever-present, from the opening paragraph to the end.
Arenas's life represents an attack on the Castro government. The government objected to his writing, sexual orientation, and political beliefs and Arenas used the same weapons to denounce the injustices to which he and many other Cubans were subjected. The detailed homosexual experiences are a way of desensitizing the reader but also of defying Cuban policy and culture. Arenas challenges the Cuban authorities by suggesting that all Cubans are homosexuals. From a Cuban cultural point of view, only the passive partner in a homosexual relationship is considered to be gay; the active partner is regarded to be exercising his rights as a man. Arenas looks at this relationship from a North American perspective and reveals that everyone in Cuba has had some form of homosexual encounter, including members of Castro's police and military force who feel they are machos, but in reality are no different from him.
In Cuba, Arenas is considered to be a marginal writer. Yet outside the island Arenas's work elevates him to canonical stature.
Cuban literature written in the United States is distinctly different from Puerto Rican writing insofar as Cubans write about events and situations on their island. In this respect, Cuban writing both at home and abroad is similar to insular Puerto Rican literature. However, Puerto Rican literature written in the United States describes the life of Puerto Ricans who migrated to New York. The difference between Cuban and Puerto Rican writings in the United States is historical. Cubans traveled to the United States mainly for political reasons and viewed their exile as transitory. Their presence in the United States afforded them a political and literary freedom denied to them in their own country. Puerto Ricans traveled to the United States mainly for economic reasons. The US government's attempt to make Puerto Rico into the showcase of the Caribbean and to industrialize the island offset the Puerto Rican agricultural economy and forced many to leave the rural areas for better-paying jobs in the city. Operation Bootstrap displaced farm workers from the countryside to San Juan and from the capital to New York City. The Puerto Rican rags-to-riches dream turned into a nightmare as a large portion of New York's Puerto Rican population was either unemployed or assumed the lowest-paying jobs. Puerto Rican writers witnessed and some even experienced the migratory pattern created, first by the Jones Act and second by the congressional decision of 1952, making Puerto Rico a Free Associated State.
The large migratory waves to the United States gave the Puerto Rican community a sense of permanence, necessary for the development of a literature of migration. Therefore, Puerto Rican literature in the United States can be divided into two parts: the first is composed by island writers who visited but did not stay in the United States, and is written in Spanish and published abroad. The second, which is more recent, is written by Puerto Ricans who were either born or raised in the United States. Since most of these writers lived in New York City during the 1960s and 1970s, they identified themselves with the city and called themselves Puerto Rican New Yorkers or Nuyoricans, a term which gave identity and meaning to their artistic and literary expressions. Although this term is still relevant today, it does not speak to the experiences of younger Puerto Rican writers who were born or raised in other parts of the United States. Regardless of whether they live in or outside the city, this second group writes mainly in English and publishes in the United States. Nevertheless, both groups write about the Puerto Rican experience in New York. Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics born and raised in the United States share a common background and are also known as Latinos.
Hispanic Caribbean narrative written in the United States acquires an important dimension with the Puerto Rican writers of the Generación del Cuarenta [The Generation of 1940]; that is, with those who began to publish after Operation Bootstrap. Many of them short-story writers, they testify to the effects of Operation Bootstrap on those who were adversely affected by the “Puerto Rican Miracle,” that is, the US effort to industrialize the island. The characters are taken from society's lower socio-economic levels. They are poor, uneducated, and marginal elements of society; those who were supposed to benefit from the economic changes become society's victims. For them, pain, suffering, and personal tragedies are an integral part of their migratory experience.
Many of the stories reveal the reason Puerto Ricans left their farms and villages for the city. The theme of displacement is best captured by La carreta, by Rene Marqués (1919-1980), a play about a family who abandoned the countryside for the slums of San Juan and ultimately for the ghettos of New York City. The theme of Marqués's play will be explored by other writers. Although it is difficult to state categorically that these authors wrote in the United States, we do know that they, like Puerto Rican writers before them, traveled frequently to New York.
José Luis González (b. 1926) is one of the first to write about the displacement of Puerto Ricans. In his third collection of short stories El hombre en la calle, he outlines the Puerto Rican tragedy and signals a new trend in the short story, moving away from rural to urban themes represented by San Juan but also New York City. González's En este lado continues the theme of Puerto Rican migration, this time, from San Juan to New York. As he reveals “this side” (the New York side) of the Puerto Rican experience, González shows a keener awareness of society and race both in and outside Puerto Rico, covering Mexico and the Korean War.
González's first story about New York was published in his En Nueva York y otras desgracias. In the title story, written in 1948, his protagonist, Marcelino Pérez, experiences a series of misfortunes from the moment his boat docks in New York harbor, some due to circumstances but others to his own ignorance. Like many of González's characters, Marcelino is a desperate man; despite his ill health, he abandons his bed to rob an elderly woman who happens to be Puerto Rican. He hesitates when hearing her speak Spanish. Marcelino, himself a victim of circumstances, retains a sense of national dignity and does not add to the suffering of his own people.
Many of González's ideas are gathered in Paisa, a narrative version of Marqués's La carreta in which he describes the same migratory pattern as the play, and the moral and physical destruction of the protagonist. In New York, the story's protagonist, Andrés, is discriminated against and has no other alternative but to turn to a life of crime. In its narrative structure, Paisa is González's most experimental story about New York. The two narrations, one present and the other past, come together with the police shooting of Andrés. The ending departs from La carreta but is similar to “En Nueva York” and “El pasaje”; for the protagonist, there is no possible return to Puerto Rico, rather he remains in the United States. Through the character Perucho, González proposes that political action is the only solution to the Puerto Rican dilemma in the United States.
Language is important for authors writing about New York and González captures it with varying success. His “En Nueva York” reveals a lack of familiarity with some linguistic aspects of the Puerto Rican experience abroad. For example, the narrator, who describes events in a flawless Spanish, reports the temperature in Centigrade rather than in Fahrenheit and, as Marcelino gets ready to assault a lady, he moves from “house” to “house” instead of from one “building” to another. And except for a scattering of “Spanglish” words, his uneducated characters speak standard Spanish. However, González is more successful in his reproduction of Nuyorican speech in “La noche que volvimos a ser gente,” from Mambrú se fue a la guerra, which describes the blackout of New York in 1965.
Of the writers of the Generación del Cuarenta, Pedro Juan Soto (b. 1928) has been most preoccupied by the Puerto Rican presence in New York and, with authenticity, has recorded the speech of the poor or working-class Puerto Rican as well as the linguistic phenomenon of mixing Spanish and English. Soto writes from personal experiences, having lived nine years in the Bronx, from 1946 to 1954, and spending much of his time in Spanish Harlem. Spiks, whose title is a pejorative term used to describe Puerto Ricans in the United States, contains Soto's best stories. The stories reflect the same migratory pattern the author was exposed to as a child, often contrasting life on the mainland and on the island. With the exception of “La cautiva,” all of his stories take place in New York City. His “Los inocentes” and “La cautiva” describe the change between old and new values, echoing a conflict experienced by many immigrants. However, unlike other immigrant groups, Puerto Ricans are tragic figures as Soto's work suggests. For sociopolitical reasons, their integration into the US mainstream has been more difficult.
Although Soto resides in Puerto Rico, and on occasion travels to New York (he waited thirteen years before returning to New York, and in 1970-1971 taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo), he writes about Nuyoricans and pays homage to them in his Ardiente suelo, fría estación. Soto's novel is realistic insofar as it captures the problems experienced by many Puerto Ricans who returned to their native Puerto Rico during the 1960s and 1970s (in part as a result of the racial awareness brought about by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and by a heightened sense of Puerto Rican nationalism). Puerto Rico symbolizes the origin, but much to the dismay of Nuyoricans, they were not accepted by Puerto Ricans on the island and were treated as Americans; they were foreigners who did not share a common language and culture with islanders. Similarly, Soto's protagonist, Eduardo Marín, is confronted with Puerto Rican chauvinism; for the islanders he is an outsider. The frustrations Eduardo experiences on the island recall those same feelings in New York; he is an outcast both in New York and in Puerto Rico. In the end, the protagonist decides to return to the mainland, to a more familiar situation where he can assert his own individuality. Eduardo's older brother remains in Puerto Rico, thus alluding to the separation of the Puerto Rican family. The theme of Soto's novel will be repeated by Nuyorican writers but, unlike Soto's characters, they will highlight the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.
Unlike Spiks, in Ardiente suelo, fría estación Soto's characters are better educated and speak standard Spanish and English, which at times he juxtaposes to give authenticity to them. However, only seldom do they code-switch or recreate language to show the imposition and predominance of one culture over the other. The linguistic differences between Spiks and Ardiente suelo, fría estación can be attributed not only to the level of education of Soto's characters, but to Soto's distance from the mainland. Perhaps Soto also wanted to appeal to a broader Spanish-speaking audience; Soto's novel was not published in Puerto Rico but in Mexico.
Like Ardiente suelo, fría estación, Harlem todos los días by Emilio Díaz Valcárcel (b. 1929), a work which brings the experimentation of the Boom novel—prevalent in the same author's Figuraciones en el mes de marzo (1972)—to the theme of Puerto Ricans in New York, continues the concern of migration so evident in the works of Díaz Valcárcel's generation. In Harlem todos los días, the author underscores the anguish experienced by the poor, but also the life of his counterparts; those with the resources exploit the less fortunate. Regardless of the social or economic differences, all are victims of the New York environment. In this nationalistic novel, Díaz Valcárcel is critical of the colonial status under which Puerto Ricans live. However, like other island writers, Díaz Valcárcel is not able to capture effectively the linguistic complexity of Nuyorican speech. (The theme of the two cultures coming together, this time on the island, is continued in his Mi mamá me ama, 1981.)
The reproduction of the Nuyorican dialect is best achieved in the works of Nuyorican authors who are at the vanguard of a Puerto Rican or Hispanic Caribbean ethnic literature in the United States; that is, a Latino literature which questions but also accepts its North American environment. These writers, like Sandra María Esteves (b. 1948), Miguel Algarín (b. 1941), and others, write in English and have published their works in the United States. Unlike island-dwelling Puerto Ricans who visit the United States and write for a broad Spanish American audience, Nuyorican authors explore in detail the lives and condition of Puerto Ricans who live in New York. These younger writers use the language of the barrio to describe life in the ghetto. In this regard, Nuyorican narrative is not directly influenced by Spanish American literary currents, such as the literature of the Boom or Post-Boom periods, but by North American literature, in particular, the literature written by Afro-Americans; for example, some share common characteristics with Claude Brown's Manchild in a Promised Land (1965). More accurately, Nuyorican literature has no obvious model; rather, it emerges from the socio-economic conditions of Puerto Ricans in the United States. Unfortunately, Nuyorican literature still goes unrecognized by many scholars and critics of Spanish American literature. Moreover, although Puerto Rican writers in the United States celebrate their counterparts on the island, it is not reciprocal; many of the Nuyorican writers are unknown to the island public. This is so, as Soto has pointed out in his novel, because Nuyoricans are not considered authentic Puerto Ricans.
Among Nuyorican narratives, Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas (b. 1928) is already a classic. However, Thomas's book was not the first and recalls other autobiographical works by Puerto Ricans in New York, in particular The Son of Two Nations: The Private Life of a Columbia Student by Pedro Juan Labarthe (1906-1966), but is closer to A Puerto Rican in New York and other Sketches by Jesús Colón (1901-1974). Both works were written and published in the United States, but they did not have the impact Thomas's autobiography has had on a Nuyorican and English-speaking public. Only after the publication of Thomas's book are these earlier works receiving attention from critics and readers alike.
Labarthe's and Colón's books provide a framework for understanding works that were to follow. With their autobiographies two patterns emerged: first, Colón's A Puerto Rican in New York conveys the hostility with which Puerto Ricans are treated in New York, thus continuing the themes of the writers of the Generación del Cuarenta; second, Labarthe's The Son of Two Nations reflects the lives of immigrants in general, the United States representing an opportunity for the characters to improve their social and economic position. One is critical of the American dream, the other accepts it.
The difference in perspective can be attributed to the years in which the works were published. Labarthe published his novel shortly after the Great Depression, when many migrants, regardless of their place of origin, were struggling to survive in American society. Colón's book profited from a different historical setting, marked by political awareness associated with cigar-workers and other union activists, the detainment of nationalist leaders like Lolita Lebrón and Albizu Campos, the failure of the Tydings bill in 1943 to grant Puerto Rico independence, the implementation of Operation Bootstrap, and the prominence of the Civil Rights movement, particularly during the decade of the 1950s.
Colón's collection of sketches, some of which appeared in the Daily Worker and Mainstream, describe the assault of American society on Puerto Ricans and on the author, in part, often mistaken for a black American because of his dark skin. However, the book is also a testament of Colón's political beliefs and his support for the betterment of Puerto Ricans on the island through independence and Socialism.
In contrast, Labarthe's book is a reflection of the good will and faith of North Americans and of the character's own intelligence. Labarthe's formative years were influenced by his aristocratic and pro-independence father and his humble and pro-American mother. The father's abandonment of the mother, among other reasons, brings Labarthe closer to his mother's ideology; they travel to the United States not for economic reasons, but in search of a better education. In the United States, Labarthe and his mother work hard and with the help of friends, ambition, and a bit of opportunism, the author is able to transcend his condition and attain the “American dream.”
Certainly Thomas's Down These Mean Streets is the best-known work which describes the Puerto Rican experience in New York during and after the Depression. Unlike Colón and Labarthe, Thomas was born in New York and had no direct connection with the island. Thomas was raised in El Barrio and his life mirrors that of many Nuyoricans who lacked either economic opportunities or a political ideology and were susceptible to drugs, gangs, and crime. Thomas's life represents the United States at its worse; he is the product of a society which has destroyed him and his self-worth. Down These Mean Streets allows the reader to look into a window of poverty and discrimination experienced by many Hispanics who have no other choice but to live in the ghetto. From a different point of view, as an author Thomas is a success story; he has transcended his economic and social conditions and has become a known writer within the North American context.
Thomas's subsequent books develop aspects of his life already seen in Down These Mean Streets. Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand is a continuation of Down These Mean Streets and, therefore, of Thomas's life. Here Thomas looks to the Pentecostal church for salvation, and his conversion is precipitated by his aunt and Nita, his wife-to-be. In the end, Thomas's rebellion against institutions results in his separation from Nita. Seven Long Times develops in more detail the chapter on prison from his first book, providing accounts of Thomas's life in Comstock. Prison is a home, a family of sorts, and a way of life for those who have difficulty in adjusting to the outside world.
Thomas's autobiography has opened the door for the writing and publishing of works by other Puerto Ricans living in the United States. Of particular historical value is Memorias de Bernardo Vega; though Vega (1886-1965) wrote his autobiography in 1947, César Andreu Iglesias did not edit and publish it until 1977. Vega's autobiography offers a chronology of one century, from the American Civil War to the post-Second World War period. This is accomplished through a series of flashbacks narrated first by a fictitious Tío Antonio, who migrated to New York in 1847, and second by Vega himself, who traveled to the same city in 1916. The useful historical information offered by Vega, which includes some statistics, interviews, and newspaper clippings, is part of a historical development to trace the origins of the Puerto Rican independence movement from the nineteenth century to the present. Antonio recalls the role played by intellectuals and workers living in New York, the center of Cuban and Puerto Rican independence movements. With his own experience, Vega shows that in the twentieth century, the independent spirit was kept alive by the unionist activities of cigarmakers. The workers have been at the forefront of the independence movement, though Vega sees marked differences between the Puerto Rican nationalist and communist parties. Vega is concerned with preserving Puerto Rican nationalism and identity.
There are other works which attempt to imitate Down These Mean Streets, such as Una isla en Harlem by Manuel Manrique, Nobody's Hero by Lefty Barreto (b. 1942), and Run Baby Run by Nick Cruz (b. 1938). Like Thomas's work, they are “autobiographical” accounts of Puerto Ricans who turned to a life of crime and violence. However, Richard Ruiz's The Hungry American and Humberto Cintrón's Frankie Cristo follow more closely the pattern set by Labarthe's The Son of Two Nations and describe those who grew up in the ghetto and believed in the American dream. For Ruiz, New York is just a resting place to travel to other parts of the United States. Ruiz's life recalls Labarthe's: both authors were born in Puerto Rico, their families had a difficult time making ends meet on the island, they leave hoping to better their lives, and they succeed in making it out of the New York ghetto. Like Labarthe who earned an MA at Columbia University, Cintrón valued education and completed his MA at the University of California.
If Thomas's experience provided a disturbing view of a country in which violence, drugs, crime, and sex were commonplace, the experience of women was much different. In this regard, Nicholasa Mohr (b. 1935), perhaps the first Puerto Rican woman to write fiction in English, represents still another side of the Nuyorican perspective. A painter turned writer, she has been very active, publishing three novels, Nilda, Felita, and Going Home, and three collections of short stories, El Bronx Remembered, In Nueva York, and Ritual of Survival: A Woman's Portfolio, and has completed her memoirs, In My Own Words: Growing Up Inside the Sanctuary of my Imagination. Mohr's narratives appeal to a broader English-speaking reader and have received awards such as the New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, Library Journal Best Book of the Year, the American Book Award, and others. Because of the simplicity of her language, images, and metaphors, and for marketing purposes, Mohr's books have been unjustly classified as children's literature. According to Mohr, only Felita was written for children.
Written from a child's or adolescent's perspective, her works offer a balanced view of reality, describing both positive and negative experiences. Many of Mohr's stories contain autobiographical references, particularly Nilda and Felita. For example, in Nilda, she describes her brother's involvement in crime and drugs and, in Felita, the prejudice her family encounters when they move from a crowded neighborhood to a white one and back again. The child narrator is advantageous to Mohr, allowing her to describe the ghetto with objectivity and innocence, tenderness and compassion unknown in the works of her male counterparts. There are no political or social commentaries of an adult narrator, but a description of everyday life: the broken-down buildings, the roaches, the lack of food, the loss of innocence are part of the narrative background. Mohr's works represent a new direction for Nuyorican narrators, away from the violence and assimilation and toward a more balanced view of Puerto Ricans in the United States.
Of the writers, Mohr, but also Algarín and Miguel Piñero (1946-1988), have been outspoken about reappropriating Puerto Rican identity and in their criticism of the treatment Nuyoricans receive when returning to Puerto Rico. Mohr demystifies the Puerto Rican paradise and accepts New York and the United States as her permanent home. The return to Puerto Rico is the theme of Going Home. As in Soto's Ardiente suelo, fría estación, Felita experiences difficulty in accepting the island's culture. Mohr contrasts the values of the mainland with those of the island and shows the difference in the treatment of men and women. Felita misses New York and returns “home” to her native city. Mainstream Puerto Rican writers living on the island are also concerned about the question of identity. This is evident in Luis Rafael Sańchez's “La guagua aérea,” which describes the daily air shuttles between San Juan and New York, or allá and acá, and how that frequent migratory travel underscores the dilemma of Puerto Rican identity.
The narrative has played a prominent role in describing the life of Puerto Ricans in the United States, but Nuyorican poetry, although recent, is popular and has received publicity in centers like The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, El Caney, and The New Rican Village. Poetry written in the United States can be traced to Julia de Burgos (1916-1953), who lived in New York from 1942 to 1953 and wrote about the city which occupied an important place in her life; this is particularly evident in her posthumous El mar y tú, otros poemas. But her Obra poética contains fourteen poems written in New York, though others have been found. Like island writers who traveled to New York, Burgos wrote about the political situation in her native Puerto Rico, as seen in “Una canción a Albizu Campos,” “23 de septiembre,” and “De Betances a Albizu,” though toward the end of her life she wrote in English about “Welfare Island,” and “The Sun in Welfare Island,” where she died. It would however be left to another group of poets to displace the attention Burgos gave to Puerto Rico and develop further the ideas contained in the poems she dedicated to life in New York.
Puerto Rican poetry in the United States acquires a bilingual dimension with Jaime Carrero (b. 1931) and his Jet neorriqueño-Neo-Rican Jetliner, the first work to introduce the term “Neo-Rican” which later gave coherence and identity to a group of younger writers. Carrero also brings to poetry the theme of migration prevalent in the works of the writers of the Generación del Cuarenta. Carrero's poetry is taken one step further by Nuyorican poets who are mainly concerned with the presence of Puerto Ricans in New York. Of this group, Pedro Pietri (b. 1944) is its best exponent. A writer of plays, narratives, and poetry, Pietri is best known for his Puerto Rican Obituary; the title poem, “Puerto Rican Obituary,” was first published in Palante: Young Lords Party, in 1971, and was known to Hispanics in New York City many years before. A descriptive but also symbolic poem, “Puerto Rican Obituary” is the single most important poem in Nuyorican literature. Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, and Manuel are familiar figures who worked hard and believed in the American dream which they could not attain. As they mirror the conditions under which they lived, the poetic voice condemns them for abandoning their roots and culture. According to the poem, the cycle can be broken if Puerto Ricans develop a sense of national pride and identity. Written in spoken (street) language, which for Pietri includes mixing some Spanish and English, this and other poems are closer to an oral tradition and are meant to be performed or read aloud. Language expresses pride and unity among Nuyoricans, thus rejecting the pressures to assimilate into a “standard” language or way of life. Pietri continues the theme of his best-known work in poems, such as “The Broken English Dream,” where he shows that Puerto Ricans did not gain, but rather lost what little they had, including their identity and pride, when they traveled to the United States.
The standards set by Pietri are equaled by Tato Laviera (b. 1951) who, like Pietri, is a playwright and poet. In poetry, Laviera has published La Carreta Made a U-Turn, Enclave, AmeRican, and Mainstream Ethics. Laviera's first book continues the ending of Marqués's play, but rather than returning to Puerto Rico, New York is the final destination; that is, there is no lost paradise to which Puerto Ricans return, but a new-found reality. By not completing the full circle, Laviera speaks about his own migratory process; he was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. Despite the difficult life Puerto Ricans must endure abroad, the poem reveals that Puerto Ricans in the United States have undergone a change; although they still identify symbolically with the motherland, they are no longer her children and in reality can never go back. This observation is due to a noticeable predominance of English over Spanish. Yet, ironically, Laviera ends his book with a series of poems in Spanish, suggesting that the problem need not be linguistic but is one of preference. Cultural elements such as those expressed in Afro-Caribbean culture are revered; they allow for an identity of sorts with others struggling in the ghetto and in particular African-Americans. In effect, Puerto Ricans have set the groundwork for the creation of a Hispanic Caribbean subculture within the North American context.
Laviera has the gift of assuming many voices which include the street junkie, the woman, and even the Statue of Liberty. Yet he is most effective when taking on the voice of a fetus about to be born on Christmas Day. Drawing on religious symbolism, “Jesús Papote” is an epic poem about the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. This other Christ figure is born not of a sacred virgin but of a heroin addict who has numerous lovers. The fetus's struggle for survival begins in the womb; he was forced to be a man before he became a child. “Jesús Papote” is certainly a major poem in contemporary Hispanic and American poetry. Younger poets continue to write in the style of Pietri and Laviera. Of these Martín Espada (b. 1957) should be noted; his works include The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction, and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands.
The woman's perspective among poets is growing and is best represented by Sandra María Esteves whose publications include Yerba Buena, Tropical Rains: A Bilingual Downpour, and Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo. Esteves and other women poets belong to the tradition initiated by Burgos, but also by the women's movement in the United States. The woman's perspective is different from that of the male counterpart insofar as it challenges the dominant Hispanic male culture. Esteves acknowledges Burgos's importance in “A Julia y a mí” and recognizes the poet's strengths and failures. In her best poem “My Name is Maria Christina” Esteves expresses pride in being a Puerto Rican woman from El Barrio. She accepts her traditional role as provider and child-bearer and her new one as creator of different values; she rejects the denigrating aspects of her culture. As a female Christ (Cristina), she is origin and strength, elements necessary for the survival of Puerto Rican identity. Nevertheless, Luz María Umpierre (b. 1947), a recognized poet with works such as En el país de las maravillas, Una puertorriqueña en Penna, y otras Desgracias And Other Misfortunes, and The Margarita Poems, has been critical of Esteves's view of women, believing that she did not go far enough. Umpierre counters Esteves's “My Name is Maria Christina” with her own “In Response,” a poem in which the poetic voice denies being María Cristina and, unlike her, is a totally liberated woman. Though Esteves's and Umpierre's poems pertain to Puerto Rican culture, the poets' awareness comes from the North American environment, in general, and the women's movement, in particular.
Puerto Rican identity is certainly important, but some of the poets are beginning to go beyond the familiar themes and include wider concerns. In the case of Laviera, he finds common ground with other Caribbean groups like Jamaicans, but also Chicanos. The attempt to enter the mainstream is exemplified by Miguel Algarín who has published Mongo Affair, On Call, Body Bee Calling From the 21st Century, and Time's Now. Algarín begins to branch out and look for common ground among the different cultures as early as his second book which includes his poems “Buddha” and “Balance,” representing aspects of Asian culture and religion. His next book is more concerned with sex and the last one with love.
Among the Puerto Rican writers living and writing in the United States, the work of Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. 1952) is of particular interest. She is a poet and novelist and with Mohr, one of the few women narrators writing in English. She has published three books of poems, Latin Women Pray, Peregrina, and Terms of Survival, one book of memoirs, Silent Dancing, and one novel, The Line of the Sun. Ortiz Cofer was born in Puerto Rico and raised in the United States; after her father joined the Navy, the family moved often and lived in different cities. Her work touches upon some of the themes of other Nuyorican writers but she expresses them from a less marginal perspective, in a language that is more polished and mainstream. Unlike the other writers, Ortiz Cofer is not concerned about the linguistic phenomenon caused by the coming together of Spanish and English nor about the clashing of the two cultures. Many of her poems are of a personal nature, often describing her innermost thoughts, vivid experiences, and members of her family. Poems such as “Housepainter,” “Moonlight Performance,” “Woman Watching Sunset,” and “The Mule” are written with a keen insight of the subject and are composed with much thought and mastery over her expression, but show no trace of her Puerto Rican or ethnic background. There are other poems such as “Visiting La Abuela,” “The Gusano of Puerto Rico,” and “Latin Women Pray” which suggest a certain Hispanic thematics but although they contain Hispanic names and references to the island, they are written in standard English. Only in a handful of poems does she venture away from English and incorporate a few words of standard Spanish such as “la leche” in “Pueblo Waking” and the vendor's call “frutas hoy, y viandas” in “The Fruit Vendor.” Even though she chooses not to use her Spanish, Ortiz Cofer is certainly aware of her parents' language, which the poetic voice will teach others as she reveals in “Lesson One: I Would Sing:”
In Spanish, “cantaría” means I would sing,
Cantaría bajo la luna,
I would sing under the moon.
Cantaría cerca de tu tumba,
By your grave I would sing,
Cantaría de una vida perdida,
Of a wasted life I would sing,
If I may, if I could, I would sing
In Spanish the conditional tense is the tense of dreamers,
of philosophers, fools, drunkards,
of widows, new mothers, small children,
of old people, cripples, saints, and poets.
It is the grammar of expectation and
the formula for hope: cantaría, amaría, viviría.
Please repeat after me.
Ortiz Cofer's poem is concerned with translation and perhaps bilingualism, but is certainly aware of the power of Spanish verbs and tenses, which are antithetical to their less expressive English equivalents. This poem is about marginal people who speak a language, and therefore live in a culture, of hope.
Ortiz Cofer's The Line of the Sun is an autobiographical novel of sorts which narrates the story of three generations of Marisol Santa Luz Vivente's family. Marisol, the granddaughter, is Puerto Rican by birth but is raised in the United States after her parents migrate in the 1950s. The novel is divided into two thematic parts: the first pertains to her Puerto Rican village where her father and uncle grew up, and describes rituals and traditions of the island and her uncle Guzman's mischievous life. The second part takes place in El Building in New Jersey and in New York City where she experiences the harsh reality of living on the mainland. A comparison between the two parts shows that the poverty her family endured on the island prefigures that of the mainland. Marisol suffers from an identity crisis created by living in the village of Salud, Puerto Rico, and in Patterson, New Jersey, but also by her father's desire to become Americanized and her mother's knowledge of Puerto Rico and letters about Guzman. Writing takes on a therapeutic meaning: it is a way of staying in touch with her Puerto Rican heritage while living in the United States.
Like poetry and narrative, the Nuyorican theatre is rapidly gaining in popularity, with the emergence of such performing groups as The Puerto Rican Playwrights and Actors Workshops, Teatro Cuatro, El Teatro Ambulante, and Aquarius Theater. This genre is particularly important to the contemporary Puerto Rican and Hispanic communities because it recreates life in the United States, one all too familiar to the Hispanic audience, thus appealing to first-time theatre-goers and providing an alternative for those who customarily take advantage of this art form.
The Hispanic theatre written in the United States has a long history that dates back to the nineteenth century; but in recent times Puerto Rican theatre can be traced to Esta noche juega el joker (1939) by Fernando Sierra Berdecía, (1903-1962), a play about the cultural differences between the island and the mainland and the adjustments Puerto Ricans must undergo in New York. It received standing ovations from the public when performed at the Club Artístico del Casino de Puerto Rico and outside the island. Berdecía's tradition was continued by Manuel Méndez Ballester (b. 1909) with Encrucijada (1958) and Jaime Carrero with Caja de caudales F M (1978). However, Nuyorican theatre is best represented by Miguel Piñero—also known as a poet—and his play Short Eyes. Like Mohr's stories, Piñero's play has met with great success, receiving the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Obie (Off-Broadway) for 1973-1974, and being produced by Joseph Papp at the Lincoln Center, and reviewed by magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Daily News, and Newsweek, among others. The play received its strongest endorsement by Hollywood when it was made into a full-length motion picture with the same name. Piñero's play recalls the prison theme prevalent in Thomas's Down These Mean Streets and Seven Long Times. The play reduces the tensions in society to their basic premise, to the racial and ethnic discrimination which Blacks and Puerto Ricans in and outside prison must endure. In prison language (which recalls that of the barrios and ghettos), “short eyes” refers to a child molester, the most serious crime of all. Prison life is a mirror of society with racial problems and its own system of justice. However, it is also an inversion of society: the crime is committed not by a Black or a Hispanic but by a White, the black and Puerto Rican prisoners in their overwhelming numbers are in power, and homosexuality plays an important role in prison life. As in society, prison is ineffective in correcting behavior.
As chroniclers of an ethnic culture which is Puerto Rican and North American, Puerto Rican writers in the United States have provided a framework for other Hispanic Caribbean authors who write about their lives and experiences in the same North American environment. As Cubans come to terms with the permanent nature of their condition as exiles, many authors are writing about Cuban American themes. They describe the problems which affect the Cuban American community, even though this community is not homogenous regarding its political views toward Cuba.
It is still early to identify Cuban American figures who will leave a lasting mark, but there are some literary patterns which are emerging. Cuban American narrators write in Spanish and in English. Those who use Spanish bring aspects of the contemporary Spanish American novel into their works; those who use English adhere more closely to North American literary trends. The adopted language suggests an assimilation of sorts, the vernacular represents an attempt to preserve Cuban or Hispanic identity. Although some authors write in Spanish, an increasing number of them are writing in English, and even capturing the influence one language has over the other. These writers are at the forefront of developing a Latino intercultural literature.
In narrative, the theme of the coming together of the two languages and cultures is highlighted by “Nothing in Our Hands But Age” (1979) by Raquel Puig Zaldívar (b. 1950). In this amusing yet tragic story, Puig Zaldívar unites two generations of Cuban exiles, one represented by a teacher educated in the United States, and the other by an elderly exiled couple who must return to school and learn English to revalidate their degrees. The story is about freedom, pride, and perseverance. Similarly, La vida es un special by Roberto Fernández (b. 1951), which pertains to Cuban exiles living in Miami, underscores the lack of communication between the younger generation that wants to assimilate into mainstream society, and the adults, who do not speak English and desire to preserve the original culture. In language, the harsh reality is represented by the coming together of Spanish, English, and Spanglish. Also, Fernández's La montaña rusa, influenced by the Latin American novel of the Boom period, expands on the themes of La vida, depicts the life of Cuban Americans in Miami, and is critical of their sexual and anticommunist obsessions as well as their liberal ideas. Most recently he published Raining Backwards, a novel which gathers aspects of Cuban culture within the North American environment. In Los viajes de Orlando Cachumbambé by Elías Miguel Muñoz (b. 1954), the author uses contemporary techniques to describe a Cuban exile narrator-protagonist who seesaws between two cultures as his mixture of Spanish and English suggests. Muñoz moves closer to the North American culture in his Crazy Love, whose title refers to a song by the American pop figure Paul Anka. The novel is written in English and highlights the coming together of the two cultures. By contrast, in “Etruscans” (1981) by María del Carmen Boza (b. 1952), references to Cuba and Miami are part of the protagonist's past; Cuban culture can hardly be discerned, as the protagonist visits a farm in rural Pennsylvania. The story relates to school, friendship, pride, and honesty.
Cuban American writers, like their established exile counterparts, write about Cuba and exile. For example, Pablo Medina (b. 1948) who wrote Pork Rind and Cuban Songs and Arching into the Afterlife, also published Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood, an autobiographical account in which the protagonist recollects the first twelve years of his life, which includes his experiences in pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba, and those after his arrival in New York in 1960. Above all, the book is a collective memory of personal experiences, but also family customs and traditions which allow the protagonist to narrate events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book is a nostalgic account of the past and is accompanied by illustrations of Medina and his family. In “Litany” by Damián Fernández (b. 1957), the protagonist who lives in Cuba is marginal and does not participate in Cuban revolutionary society. In Roberto Fernández's “La encadenada,” the characters find it difficult to overcome their condition of exile.
The exile experience is also a theme among the youngest writers of the Mariel Generation. Virgil Suárez (b. 1962), the author of Latin Jazz and Welcome to the Oasis and Other Stories, also published The Cutter, a story about Julián Campos who is at the Havana Airport waiting to leave the island and join his family in the United States when the Cuban security police detain him. Because of the departure of his family five years earlier and his desire to leave the island, Julián is forced to join the Young Pioneers and do additional voluntary work cutting sugar cane. The time of the narration is 1969, one year before the completion of the failed Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest. In the end, Julián's situation is desperate and he escapes from the island-prison and arrives in Miami. Two other writers of the Mariel Generation worth noting are Roberto Valero (b. 1955) and Miguel Correa (b. 1956).
The representation of two cultures, two languages, and two countries in Cuban American narrative is also reflected in poetry. In her “Para Ana Velfort,” in Palabras juntan revolución, Lourdes Casal (1938-1981) is caught between two worlds: she refers to New York as her “patria chica,” although recognizing that she was not born there. In Cimarrón, Ricardo Alonso (b. 1954) is disappointed with the United States but also knows that he is a stranger to the island. In Sorting Metaphors, Ricardo Pau-Llosa (b. 1954) looks at Miami with a distant critical eye.
The two most important Cuban American poets are Octavio Armand (b. 1946) and José Kozer (b. 1940), whose works can be understood as responding to the problems of contemporary Latin American writing. Armand's poetry includes Horizonte no es siempre lejanía, Cómo escribir con erizo, and Biografía para feacios (1977-1979), and although his works are difficult to classify, he attempts to bridge the gap between poetry and prose, at times bordering on one or the other or even a combination of both. His works reveal a preoccupation with the word; not satisfied with its old referents, he desires to attribute to it more than what their tired meanings offer. Other concerns of his include the physical, psychological, and emotional estrangements in which the body, his and that of the text, plays an important role. In Biografía para feacios, Armand searches for and escapes to where he is, because there is no “other side.”
Other poets go beyond the Cuban American experience. Kozer's most recent works include La rueca de los semblantes, Jarrón de las abreviaturas, Bajo este cien, La garza sin sombras, El carrillón de los muertos, and Carece de causa. The creativity in language noted in Armand's poetry is also present in Kozer's works except that, in the case of the latter, it becomes an eternal quest for answers to questions which have no solutions. The poem becomes an unending search for identity and meaning. He tries to put together a puzzle in which he is just another piece: that of a Cuban Jew in an adopted New York environment. Some of Kozer's poems include Yiddish words with cultural and political referents, thus adding a multicultural dimension to his tropes. For example, in “Kafka” Koser writes about physical isolation and mental escape and makes references to Prague and Lima. In “Julio” the poetic voice describes with nostalgia the past in which childhood and his grandmother were central elements. In an insightful essay on Kozer's works, “Noción de José Kozer,” the critic (and poet) Gustavo Pérez Firmat highlights the use of various languages with their multiple referents and studies the grammatical function of parentheses in the poems.
The Cuban American theatre is beginning to make inroads in the United States. Of the playwrights, Dolores Prida (b. 1943) and her Beautiful Señoritas, which was performed many years before it was published, deserves some attention. The play is influenced by the women's movement in the United States and is an attempt to address the issue of Cuban or Hispanic women within the North American context.
Although some writers like Armand and Koser are gaining in popularity, other Cuban American writers are known only in small circles, mainly within the Cuban and Hispanic communities in the United States. Perhaps the exception is Oscar Hijuelos (b. 1951) and his The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which was published by a major publisher, Farrar Strauss & Giroux, and earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. Hijuelos had published Our House in the Last World, which pertains to the experiences of his family who traveled to the United States in the 1940s, but it was The Mambo Kings which made him the star figure of Cuban American writers. Reviewed by all major newspapers and magazines, the novel, set in 1949, narrates the journey of two Cuban musicians, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who leave Havana and with hard work become musical celebrities of the mambo in New York. After his affair with María, Nestor devotes his life to her memory and writes twenty-two versions of “Beautiful María of My Soul.” Music makes the protagonists famous during a period in which Latin music was leaving its mark in the United States; they even appear on the “I Love Lucy” show and play in Desi Arnaz's Tropicana Club. In the author's words: “This is a wonderful book about American history and culture and its intermixing with Cuban culture.” With The Mambo Kings, Hijuelos has made the transition from a Cuban American writing to mainstream North American literature.
Dominicans are the most recent group of Hispanic Caribbean authors to write in the United States. The Dominican Republic and its writers have been marked by two important events: the end of the Trujillo dictatorship and the US invasion of the island. In the Dominican Republic, these two events motivated a Dominican literature which is obsessed with narrating life under the dictatorship and during the US occupation. The same events opened the door for a new wave of Caribbean immigrants to the United States, increasing in numbers in the 1970s. Only in the 1980s has a Dominican literature written in the United States emerged.
Dominican authors writing in the United States are mainly poets whose works resemble those of first-generation migrants writing in Spanish and publishing in their country of origin. Their presence in the United States has given them greater freedom to continue the Dominican literary tradition abroad. Some writers are merging their native culture with that of their adopted country to form a synthesis of the two. Magazines and anthologies have been responsible for giving publicity to these authors and creating an interested public. Unfortunately, some of the magazines have had limited circulation; they include Letras e Imágenes (1981-1982), Inquietudes (1981-1982), Punto 7 Review (1985-), and Alcance (1983-). Of the anthologies, we should mention Franklin Gutiérrez's Espiga del siglo (1984), Niveles del imán (1983), and Voces del exilio (1986), and the bilingual Poemas del exilio y de otras inquietudes edited by Daisy Cocco de Filippis and Emma Jane Robinett.
Like other Hispanic Caribbean authors, Dominican writers are beginning to show the influence of North American culture in their works. Leandro Morales (b. 1957) writes about death in “Coplas para la muerte de mi madre” and about Artaud in “Antonin Artaud,” a theme also repeated by Alexis Gómez Rosa (b. 1950) in “Cédula métrica”; but in “Cielo pragmático” and “Una y otra vez me preguntaron,” Gómez Rosa describes the cemeteries of Newark and Central Park of New York, respectively. The search for an identity created by living abroad is present in English in Homecoming by Julia Alvarez (b. 1951). She and Chiqui Vicioso (b. 1948) also offer a female perspective in Dominican poetry. The loss of identity is a concern of Franklin Guitiérrez (b. 1951) in his Helen, about a woman whose transformation is evident in her name change from the Spanish Helena to the English Helen. The reality of living in New York and searching for the American dream is best captured by Guillermo Francisco Gutiérrez (b. 1958) in Condado con candado (1986). The despair created by exile is present in the works of Tomás Rivera Martínez (b. 1956) and Héctor Rivera (b. 1957). The African American awareness of race and racism is an important influence on Dominican authors. Norberto James Rolling (b. 1945) looks at the issues of race in the Dominican Republic and brings into focus an Afro-Caribbean tradition. Chiqui Vicioso recognizes and defends the Haitian influence on Dominican culture.
Race is also the concern of Miguel A. Vázquez (b. 1942), one of the first Dominican narrators to write in the United States. Vázquez's Mejorar la raza is a coming to terms with the racial prejudice of Hispanic Caribbean culture which promotes the betterment of Blacks by “whitening” their skin color. Although the novel takes place in the Dominican Republic, the United States is mentioned briefly, but is more visible in the treatment of race.
Of the Dominican women writers, Julia Alvarez has already found a place among her better-known Hispanic and Latino counterparts with her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, published by Algonquin Books in 1991. Like Mohr and Ortiz Cofer who write about their family and childhood memories, Alvarez also describes the dynamic relationships that exist between her mother, father, and their four daughters. Like other immigrants and exiles, she too tries to understand her arrival in the United States from the Dominican Republic at the age of ten and the pressures to assimilate and yet to maintain her own identity. The duality is also reflected in her writing style, in which she brings to English her knowledge of Spanish.
It will only be a matter of time before other Dominican authors follow the path outlined by Puerto Rican and Cuban American writers who use the adopted language to write about the Hispanic experience in New York and other Spanish-speaking cities. Some writers like Morales, Alvarez, Gutiérrez, Rivera, and Gómez Rosa, are already publishing in the United States.
Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States forms an integral part of a Spanish American literature of exile and migration. As the conditions of authors living in the United States become more permanent, their literature will include more images about Hispanic life in North American cities. Similarly, as the younger authors continue to express themselves in English, their works will become a part of a Hispanic American ethnic literature which describes the life of the Hispanic or Latino in the United States. Writers such as Nicholasa Mohr, María del Carmen Boza, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Oscar Hijuelos are beginning to reflect in their works the coming together of a Hispanic Caribbean tradition in a North American context. Hispanic Caribbean literature written in the United States has an impact on both Spanish American and North American literatures. Therefore, it bridges two continents, two cultures, and two languages.
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