Nuyorican is a portmanteau of “New Yorker” and “Puerto Rican” that’s used to describe Puerto Rican immigrants in New York. The word was originally used as an insult until Puerto Rican residents in East Harlem reclaimed its meaning in the 1960s and 70s. Today, the word is most often heard in the context of the Nuyorican movement, an artistic and intellectual movement led by self-identified Nuyorican people. In Bodega Dreams, Quiñonez briefly alludes to real-life poet and playwright Pedro Pietri, who set up the “Nuyorican Poets Cafe” in Manhattan, where emerging Latinx poets (many of whom were experimenting with slam poetry in the 1970s) could perform.
Nuyorican Quotes in Bodega Dreams
The Bodega Dreams quotes below are all either spoken by Nuyorican or refer to Nuyorican. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 2, Round 1
Quotes
Julia-day-Burgos is so obscure it would be hard to find a single poem of hers. In any language.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Nuyorican Term Timeline in Bodega Dreams
The timeline below shows where the term Nuyorican appears in Bodega Dreams. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Round 4: The Fire This Time
...owned Boston. Bodega thinks that if his plan goes well, there might even be a Nuyorican president one day.
(full context)
