Nuyorican and Diasporican Literature and Culture

Abstract The term “Nuyorican” (in its various spellings) refers to the combination of “Puerto Rican” and “New Yorker.” The sobriquet became a popular shorthand for the Puerto Rican exodus to the United States after World War II. Since the mid-1960s, the neologism became associated with the literary and artistic movement known as “Nuyorican.” The movement was institutionalized with the 1973 founding of the Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower East Side of Manhattan by Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero. Much of Nuyorican literature featured frequent autobiographical references, the predominance of the English language, street slang, realism, parodic humor, subversive politics, and a rupture with the island’s literary models. Since the 1980s, the literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora has been characterized as “post-Nuyorican” or “Diasporican” to capture some of its stylistic and thematic shifts, including a movement away from urban blight, violence, colloquialism, and radicalism. The Bronx-born poet María Teresa (“Mariposa”) Fernández coined the term “Diasporican” in a celebrated 1993 poem. Contemporary texts written by Puerto Ricans in the United States also reflect their growing dispersal from their initial concentration in New York City.