What I Think about the Topic
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| Nuyorican Poets Cafe building on East 3rd St. in Alphabet City |
In this blog, I would gather my experience on hearing a Latino USA podcast episode called "A Spoken History Of The Nuyorican Poets Cafe" on November 12, 2021, listening to this episode on December 10, 2021. This episode we are hearing from poets Jesús "Papoleto" Meléndez and Caridad de la Luz, known as "La Bruja," playwright Ishmael Reed, and artist and archivist Lois Elaine Griffith. Here's the introduction, "Today, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a place for artists to perform at open mics and competitive poetry slams. It's a place to workshop and collaborate with fellow writers, and a place where they can stage their own theater productions."(Latino 4:47 - 5:02) What I liked about the topic is that we get to know some of the unique histories about Latinos in New York City. On the other hand, what I didn't like about topic is that it lacks a little modern focus.
JSTOR Information
While I was listening to this podcast episode, I have found a interesting JSTOR article called "Ethnicity and Performance: Bilingualism in Spanglish Verse Culture" by Harald Zapf that also focused about The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and featured some of the poems, while discussing its culture. "'Nuyorican' was supposed to refer to 'the experience of Puerto Ricans on the streets of New York'; the term also had an overt socioeconomic meaning, which implicitly questioned the American capitalist system and accused the middle and upper-class strata of American society of internal colonization."(Zapf 2) I selected this because it is obviously talking about the same topic as the podcast does, but that's not it. It also gave us analysis on the perspective of literature, and focusing on the what its title suggests, bilingualism and ethnicity.
My Summary
Overall, the two sources gave me a great amount of information about this organization. The podcast is more of a discussion of its history and what the place is all about, Caridad de la Luz said, "It's just a simple stage, a microphone, black curtains, brick walls, and magic, and you go in there, and even though it's called The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which you know, is rooted in Puerto Ricans in New York, making the Nuyorican culture, it is open to everyone."(Latino 17:15 - 17:35) The article is a great analysis while listening to this podcast, examining its culture over the years. Zapf stated, "Between 1975 and 1994, the influence of bilingual Latino poets on Spanish verse culture at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe diminished, but the gradual loss of lingual diversity was often accompanied by a gain in vocal and performative complexity, as Aloud-texts by artists like Morris, Gaines, Maggie Estep, or Everton Sylvester show. Since 1994, the presence of bilingual Latinos at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has become somewhat stronger again, but performance poetry in English still tends to predominate.(Zapf 13) In relation to the theme of religion, we can still think that it has a part in all this because religion did sure helped along the way to how they've their literature and creativity in The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Here is a video introducing about The Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Latino poets, playwrights founded iconic Nuyorican Poets Café - Youtube - by Eyewitness News ABC7NY
"Latino USA, A Spoken History Of The Nuyorican Poets Cafe” Www.capradio.org, www.capradio.org/news/latino-usa/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2021.
Latino Poets, Playwrights Founded Iconic Nuyorican Poets Café. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VDwEcTUP8. Accessed 10 Dec. 2021.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Nuyorican Poets Café.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Dec. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuyorican_Poets_Caf%C3%A9. Accessed 10 Dec. 2021.
Zapf, Harald. “Ethnicity and Performance: Bilingualism in Spanglish Verse Culture.” Amerikastudien / American Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, Universitätsverlag WINTER Gmbh, 2006, pp. 13–27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41158195. Accessed 10 Dec. 2021.
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