15 Books Published by Arte Público Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

i think in spanish / i write in english / i want to go back to puerto rico / but I wonder if my kink could live / in ponce, mayaguez and carolina. Born in Puerto Rico but raised in New York City, Tato Laviera’s poetry reflects his bilingual, bicultural Nuyorican existence while celebrating the universality of the human condition and his European, indigenous and African roots.



Tato Laviera explores identity, community, urban life, oppression and much more in these multi-layered pieces that spanned his too-short life. Many deal with themes specific to the immigrant experience, such as the sense of alienation many feel when they are not accepted in their native or adopted land. In nuyorican, he writes about returning to his native island, only to be looked down upon for his way of speaking: ahora regreso, con un corazón boricua, y tú / me desprecias, me miras mal, me atacas mi hablar.



Music and dance, an integral part of Puerto Rican life, permeate Laviera’s verse and pay homage to the Caribbean s African roots. i hear merengue in french haiti / and in dominican blood, / and the guaracha in yoruba, / and the mambo sounds inside the plena.



Including all of his previously published poems and some that have never been published, these are bold expressions of hybridity in which people of mixed races speak a combination of languages. He skillfully weaves English and Spanish, and frequently writes in Spanglish. The importance of language and its impact on his identity is evident in poems entitled Español, Bilingue and Spanglish. Known for his lively, energetic poetry readings, Bendición represents an internationally recognized poet’s life work and will serve to keep Tato Laviera’s words and the issues he wrote about alive long after his death.

"My housewife mother turned into a raging warrior woman when the principal of my elementary school questioned whether her daughter and the children of my public school had the intelligence to pass a citywide test," Marta Moreno Vega writes in her essay. She knew then she was loved and valued, and she learned that to be an Afro-Puerto Rican woman meant activism was her birth right.



Hers is one of eleven essays and four poems included in this volume in which Latina women of African descent share their stories. The authors included are from all over Latin America Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela and they write about the African diaspora and issues such as colonialism, oppression and disenfranchisement. Diva Moreira, a black Brazilian, writes that she experienced racism and humiliation at a very young age. The worst experience, she remembers, was when her mother’s bosses told her she didn’t need to go to school after the fourth grade, "because blacks don’t need to study more than that."



The contributors span a range of professions, from artists to grass-roots activists, scholars and elected officials. Each is deeply engaged in her community, and they all use their positions to advocate for justice, racial equality and cultural equity. In their introduction, the editors write that these stories provide insight into the conditions that have led Afro-Latinas to challenge systems of inequality, including the machismo that is still prominent in Spanish-speaking cultures.



A fascinating look at the legacy of more than 400 years of African enslavement in the Americas, this collection of personal stories is a must-read for anyone interested in the African diaspora and issues of inequality and racism.

In this affecting collection of poetry and prose, Nuyorican poet Miguel Algarin crafts beautifully angry, sad pieces about injustice and loss. While warning his compatriots about the unreality of the American Dream, he acknowledges that "we are the pistons that / move the roughage through Uncle / Sam’s intestines, we keep the flow / of New York happening / we are its muscles."

Algarin’s poems covering his long career give voice to the disenfranchised the junkie, the HIV inflicted, the poverty stricken and survival is a recurring theme. In the essay "Nuyorican Language," which was originally published in 1975, he argues that for the New York Puerto Rican, there are three survival possibilities: to work hard for little money all your life and remain in eternal debt; to live life by taking risks of all types, including killing, cheating and stealing; and to create alternative behavioral habits. The Nuyorican poet, he says, must create a new language, " A new day needs a new language or else the day becomes a repetition of yesterday."

While many of the poems focus on the Puerto Rican experience in New York, others touch on universal experiences such as the death of friends and the ephemeral nature of life. "So what if you’re dead, / I’m here, you’re gone, / and I’m left alone / to watch how time betrays, / and we die slow / so very slow." And he turns his sharp gaze on events around the world, including the fights between England and Argentina for the Falkland Islands, Israel and Palestine for the Holy Land.

With an introduction by Ernesto Quiñonez, author of the acclaimed novel Bodega Dreams, this collection takes the reader through an intimate, autobiographical journey of one of the country’s leading Nuyorican writers and intellectuals.

In the title poem of Tato Laviera’s fifth poetry collection, "Mixturao," he celebrates the mix of diverse cultures and languages that make up America, and challenges those who advocate a monolingual existence: "We who integrate / urban America / simmering in each other’s / slangs indigenous / nativizing our tongues’ / cruising accents / who are you, English, / telling me, ’Speak only English / or die?’" Laviera deftly combines English and Spanish in this poetic celebration of his own bilingual, bicultural existence and the ever-increasing use of both languages in all fields, from music to technology. In his poem entitled "Spanglish," he writes: "pues estoy creando spanglish / bi-cultural systems / scientific lexicographical / inter-textual integrations / two expressions / existentially wired / two dominant languages / continentally abrazandose…" Divided into sections that examine culture and community, Laviera continues his life-long poetic exploration of his Afro-Puerto Rican roots planted in the urban cacophony of New York City. In "Nideaquinedealla" ("Neither from Here nor from There"), he writes about the sense of alienation that all immigrants face when they are considered foreigners in both their native and adopted lands. The poems of Tato Laviera are complex and engaging, and through his words, his spirit, his bilingualism, and his dual identity, he offers the reader poems that are a celebration of life and identity.

Poetry. In Tato Laviera’s third collection, poems build on themes of ethnic exchange and the place of the borinqueno in that greater scheme. "This performance poet’s voice resonates loud and clear through forceful rhythmic variations and a complete command of both Spanish and English"—Hispania. "AMERICAN is branching out, the striking of sympathetic chords with other cultural groups on the basis of expansive Puerto Rican sounds and rhythms…He seeks to stake a claim for Puerto Rican recognition before the whole US society"—Journal of Ethnic Studies.

Collects chronicles of everyday life by a Hispanic journalist that represent three decades of New York’s Hispanic commmunity.

Firefly Summer is an enchantingly poetic recreation of life in rural Puerto Rico at the turn of the century. A young student returns home to her parents’ plantation for the holidays and re-discovers the beauty of the tropical hills, the music, lore, and customs of the country folk.

A book of poems on the cutting edge of cultural innovation. On Call is the model of Algarín’s esthetics; it transcends the search for identity, roots, and heritage. On Call reaches down into the recesses of our callused sensitivity, awakens us and, in so doing, makes us part of the poetic process.

The Way It Was and Other Writings is an autobiographical recollection of life in the Hispanic and politically radical communities of New York City. Jesus Colon was an Afro-Puerto Rican activist, distinguished writer and newspaper columnist who lived in New York from 1917 until his death in 1974.

The Way It Was is a testimonial account of the evolution of the Puerto Rican community in New York and its major figures and organizations. The book documents the strength, spirit of solidarity, and life experiences that Colón shared with many other working-class migrants.

"…a clear and refreshing note of affirmation, humaneness, joy and vigor in the face of poverty, alienation and oppression. Tato Laviera has produced a remarkably varied first book of poems".
— Explorations In Ethnic Studies"The overall impression, despite the strategic shift from one language to the other, is one of almost undetectably fluid transition, and from the standpoint of either language tradition, of a qualitative expansion of idiomatic resources".

Laviera affirms that Hispanic language, lore, art, and history are transforming the national culture and identity of this country. It is not the role of Hispanics to follow the dictates of a shadowy norm, but to remain faithful to their collective and individual identities … to either lay claim to mainstream territory or disprove its very existence.

Laviera celebrates the Puerto Rican experience in New York providing a gallery of portraits of the indomitable inhabitants of the enclave, whose lives are evoked through soulful rhythmic songs. "Enclave serves as a very timely manifestation of the modern Hispanic. It would probably be a very appropriate text in a high school or college Puerto Rican Studies or Chicano studies class." (Lector)

Miguel Algarin, poet of contemplation and action, presents his first book on the intimate relationships we foment as individuals, nations and children of a silent god. Openly political, blatantly blunt, religiously irreverent, Time’s Now/Ya es tiempo takes us from the most recondite corners of the soul through the streets of New York and to other battle fields this time in Central America and finally to union with the Godhead.

Algarín’s book is a psychic-poetic oddyssey into the bionic 21st century.

Thomas’s classic prison memoir