Puerto Rican Voices in English.

Hernandez, Ana Maria

Carmen Dolores Hernandez. Westport, Ct. Praeger/Greenwood. 1997. x + 251 pages, ill. $59.95 ($22.95 paper). ISBN 0-275-95809-4 (95810-8 paper).

Is culture indissolubly linked to language? Does Latino literature cease to be Latino when rendered in English? These ever-present questions pervade Carmen Dolores Hernandez's vibrant collection of interviews with fourteen Puerto Rican authors - most of them born or raised in New York who have chosen to write in English.

The phenomenon of biculturalism, entailing two world views as well as vulnerability to two sets of prejudices, is here approached from fourteen points of view, all of which have constants (the history, of El Barrio or Spanish Harlem from multicultural melting pot in the forties to dominant Puerto Rican enclave in the fifties; the development of Loisaida or the Lower East Side as a second, more bohemian, more artistically oriented Puerto Rican community in Manhattan) and variants (each author approaches basically the same questions from the diverse perspectives of race, color, social status, educational background and political orientation). The writers range from long-established icons like Piri Thomas (who irrupted into New York's literary scene in the sixties with Down These Mean Streets and became an instant celebrity), Pedro Pietri, and Miguel Algarin (the founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and one of the most influential figures among New York Latino poets), to angry-young-men like Abraham Rodriguez (whose novel Spidertown has been adapted to the screen), and extremely successful figures like Judge Edwin Torres of the New York Supreme Court, who has written two major novels later rendered into films (Carlito's Way and Q&A).

The choice of writers is broad and thorough, and the interviewer provides a general introduction as well as a comprehensive though schematic overview of each subject's biography and literary production. She asks basically the same questions of each writer (Where were you raised? When did you begin to write? Did you feel torn between two cultures and two languages?) and lets each one pursue his or her particular interests as the talk progresses. Unlike Luis Harss's influential interviews with the "boom" writers from the sixties (Into the Mainstream), Hernandez does not present the reader with a detailed analysis of the literary works themselves, nor does she question the writers in depth about the formal aspects of their production; thus, we find that the anecdotal far outweighs the critical in her collection.

Among the most colorful and informative of the talks is that with Miguel Algarin, who was a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, Joseph Papp, and other influential figures in New York's cultural life, and who broadened the focus of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe gatherings to include other Latino and Anglo poets as well as experimental theatrical representations and music. The very learned, methodical accounts of Jack Agueros and Victor Hernandez Cruz help to complete a picture of the first generation of Puerto Rican writers in New York who slowly establish themselves, break from isolation, and join the mainstream. Pedro Pietri gives us an intimate portrait of that eccentric, whimsical, and incisive sensitivity which has brought us some very original poetry. Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Coffer are as candid, reflective, and lyrical while unveiling their memories and disappointments as Sandra Maria Esteves is perfunctory and cliche-laden in recounting her experiences. Interviews with Taro Laviera, Ed Vega, and Louis Reyes Rivera complete this essential contribution to the understanding of the genesis and development of Puerto Rican literature in English.

Ana Maria Hernandez LaGuardia Community College, CUNY