WITHIN THE CONTEXTOF A NUYORICAN ELEMENT:SANDRA MARIA ESTEVES

Louis Reyes Rivera

I was asked to participate inthe program, "Hispanic WomenWrite," and therein to discussthe work of Sandra MariaEsteves. The focus of ourdiscussion here then is thePuerto Rican writer in theUnited States, morespecifically, the New YorkPuerto Rican writer. The givenmetaphor is Sandra MariaEsteves, but only as ametaphor, since she representsthe culmination of a literaryparticular in process since1898, the year Puerto Rico fellto English-speaking hands. Iwill not cite from her work, asshe will be sharing that withyou. Instead, I will attempt tooutline the context out ofwhich she grew into poet.

Credentially speaking,Sandra Maria Esteves is, amongother reflections, the author ofYerba Buena, which bookearned her a citation fromLibrary Journal as the best ofthe small press offerings for1980.

Since 1972 the bulk of ourliterature has been published bysmall press alternatives. Now,there are roughly about 100

large, conglomerate publishers inthis country, which control allthe major networks that getbooks into bookstores, libraries,and schools. But they don'tpublish our work. In addition,there are slightly more than1,000 fairly stable publisherscapable of competing to somedegree with the 100 biggies -but they don't publish poetryperiod, much less our poetry.Consequently, some 7-10,000little outlets with limitedaudiences and even more limitedpromotional-distributionaloutlets, networks, and budgets,are the ones which publish ourwork in limited editions. Ourpotential readership, therefore,is hard pressed to find ourwork, much less to have itassigned by an instructor toread or write about it.

Esteves, by the way, is oneof these small publishers whoseentrees include Shamsul Alam's"Hakim," and her own bilingualdownpour, Tropical Rains. Sheis, as well, the present chiefadministrator of the AfricanCaribbean Poetry Theatre; theorganizer-producer-director ofnumerous staged performancesand literary events. These

Louis Reyes Rivera is a poet and publisher. This article is excerpted from hisintroductory remarks to a discussion and reading by Sandra Maria Esteves at theHispanic Women Writers symposia, SUNY, Binghamton, February, 1988.

Pen and Ink drawing/Sandra Maria Esteves

include her Voices of the Bellypoetry series (which featuredover 100 different writers ofCaribbean and AfricanAmerican descent over a periodof three years), and thatliterary potpourri called, "Gritode Lares: Yesterday, Today,Always" (which actually offeredfor the first time more than acentury of Puerto Ricanliterature with a balancedinclusion of what is separatelyreferred to as nuyoricanliterature).

Notice that she is not justa writer - that many of uscannot be strictly about ourvocation as writers because thesocial structure under which weare kept bares us no latitude.No natural inclusion instandard curricula or automaticpatronage to encourage andsubsidize our own culturalworkers. We are faced withthe need to produce andtransform our own works intoother mediums: from thewritten to the publicperformance to the printedpage and the distributionalmechanics we are able tomuster. Otherwise, the workwould die there, hidden in acloset full of boxes or storedaway in an old suitcase.

Sandra Maria Esteves is alsoamong those fortunate oneswho happened along at a timewhen the gestation period ofour literary-tribal rejectionhere gave birth to a vanguardmovement that insisted as allnewborns insist - we are here!We matter, too!

The roots of that movementcan generally be traced to theinitial result of Europeanincursion into the Caribbean asbase from which to subjugate

the rest of the Americas. Itcan be traced to the forcedimportation of Africans intothese Antilles, these slave-breaking islands from which thePuerto Rican hails. But thestems of those roots are moreimmediately traceable to 1898,and through that process ofhistorical attrition whereeventually all of the Americasare dominated by the UnitedStates. For it is within thecontext of opposing forces,economic, political, cultural,military impositions that PuertoRicans come to reside in NewYork. Once the land thatcomprises Puerto Rico is taken,the corresponding labor andculture of the people, which isthe rest of their wealth (land,labor, culture), become subjectedto another's will and when thepeople rise up and resists, aswith the Nationalist Movementof the 30s, with itscorresponding criollismo andatavalista literary-culturalmovements, they must becrushed or conceded theirsovereignty. And so theexploitation, manipulation,distortion of our will, our ownimperatives, comprise thecontradictions we inherit aspresent condition, our state ofbeing.

Forced by external controls,we transplanted from island tomainland. The new PuertoRican, the neorican, born andraised into adult back home,then exiled from that home, wasconfronted by a world ofconditions in which we did notbelong or were hardly welcomed.Read Jos Luis Gonzalez,Bernardo Vega, Clemente SotoV6lez, and especially Julia deBurgos, and check out theirpersonal backgrounds and theimpact of their work and you

see it: the conflict betweenthat puertorriqueiiidad, which iswhat every nation is supposedto reflect and nurture, anyway,and that ruthless imposition ofsomeone else's idiom, values,perspectives, social agendaattempting to destroy what isparticular and unique. Evenamong today's latest arrivalsthe conflict is present - checkout Ivan Siln, Iris Zavala, LuzMaria Umpierre, BrendaAlejandro, Maria Mar, whoseworks adequately reflect thepull and push of a gringoyankee contradiction imposedupon people whose thoughtprocesses are conceptualized inanother language. And theywrite in that insularly rearedoffshoot of Castile's version ofSpanish; it follows here, then,they are permitted little roomto explore their senses ofworth in an English-setting. Itis, additionally, however, in thevery usage of that Englishidiom that we see thecontradiction furthermanifested.

To wit: the very childrenof that phenomenon. Thosewho were either born here ortransplanted while still babies,then raised here, are the onesto whom the tag 'nuyorican' isgiven. Among these are thatliterary vanguard throughwhich Sandra Maria Estevesgives voice to her voice. TheNew York Puerto Rican givesrise to ourselves. Spanish andSpanglish at home, standardEnglish in the schools, andBlack English mingling withSpanglish in the streets, thesocial setting.

Among the first flowerssignaling the rise of thisvanguard was Piri Thomas'Down These Mean Streets. It

is the first book written withall four elements of language atwork: Spanish, Spanglish,standard English, Black Englishor (to borrow a term from Piri'smentor, the African Americannovelist, John Oliver Killens)`Afro-Americanese' interweavingwhat would become the patternof linguistic approach toliterature. Felipe Luciano,Victor Hernandez Cruz, MiguelAlgarin, Pedro Pietri, Jose AngelFigueroa, Tato Laviera, LorraineSutton, Americo Casiano,Nicholasa Mohr, Ed Vega, MiguelPitiero, Shamsul Alam, MagdalenaGOmez, Julio Marzan, RicoVlez, JesUs 'Papoleto' Mel6ndez,Lucky Cienfuegos, Noel Rico,Roberto Marquez, SuzanaCabanas, Sandra Maria Estevesare among the key personnelcomprising that vanguard - NewYork Puerto Ricans who daredwrite, to write in fourinterchangeable tongues, thougheach of them was told, taught,trained and often tricked intobelieving that they couldn't,hadn't oughta find their place inthe body of world literature.

Puerto Ricans are notsupposed to have the capacity tothink, much less to write, evenless to devote their entire livesto the creation of their ownvoice of expression in books,and even in the very languageof their most obviousoppressors.

Notice, by the way, that thepeople mentioned are poets forthe most part. Poetry that islargely unpublished has to find amore immediate outlet thanother genres; it is moreaccessible to a live audience -we can write to be heard, to befelt, as much as to be read.The oral tradition is, in turn,key to poetry, to our poetry

certainly, to contemporaryAfrican American poetry, mostvociferously; the musical senseof nuance is, again in turn,key to the oral tradition. Withno real and equitable access topublishers, the poetry is takento the streets, the theatre ofthe people, to be heard, felt,visualized in actualperformance. That communaland dramatic nuance, thatresonance of voice is vital tothe communicational elementsat work.

Notice, as well, that Imentioned fewer women. Partof stereotype reasoning wouldfollow that if Puerto Ricansgenerally are not supposed tothink and write and speak forthemselves, especially inEnglish, then obviously, youcan't expect much more fromthe women among them.

Part of our humancondition, however, bearscertain psychologicaldisruptions peculiar to thecolonial condition. Amongthem is the factor of gendericintimidation. Given thissociety's use of tokenrepresentation, many of ourearly members of the vanguardwho broke through publisher'sbarriers tended to appearintimidated by the presence ofothers with talent. Given thechauvinism that we are allindoctrinated in, the rate ofintimidation rises when it is awoman who shows her strength.Between both points far toomuch talent is crushed evenbefore that strength is sown.

In relation to Sandra MariaEsteves, there are at least twopersonal methaphors that helpto explain both Esteves and herwork. The first has to do with

her childhood. She had beensent to a Catholic school, aconvent, with teachers whowould use a tennis racket acrossthe palms and wrists of anyonewho got caught speakingSpanish. But Esteves will tellyou herself that at that youngage she genuinely didn't knowwhich of her words belonged towhich language, so reared wasshe in forms of expressions thattransgressed the given linguisticlines. Immediately she wasafraid to speak at all.Consequently, she developed analmost "defensive" interest indrawing and painting, forms ofexpression that are still heardthough not actually vocalized.In her poetry, by the way, youcan see the drawing of imagesin her choices of words.Compare, for example, the ironictwist in her poem, "NotNeither," with the short staccatodrum jazz urban sounds in herpoem, "Bedford Hills is awoman's prison," with the lyricalfolds from Spanish to English inher poem, "A Julia Y a Mi."You see the colors and thelines, each in their respectivemusical settings.

The second has to do withher entry into poetry. Initially,of course, Esteves trained to bea graphic illustrator. But hersocial artistic contacts grew innumbers among poets, musicians,activists. As the NuyoricanPoet's Cafe in New York'sLower East Side (Loisaida)opened up the possibilities toher, she gradually began totranslate line and color intoword and sound. Many of themale poets involved encouragedher development, recognizing theneed, of course, to allow forsome token representation fromthe women. The irony, ofcourse, given our earlier

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reference to what I calledgenderic intimidation, is thatshe who was supposed to bebut the good gesture recipientbecame one of the mostrecognized of all ourcontemporary poets, whosework has appeared in numerousmagazines, and, in addition toher two previously mentioned

collections, in at least four veryimportant anthologies: The NextWorld; Womanrise; OrdinaryWomen; and Herejes ymitificadores. She too dared towrite, dared to care, and daredto grapple with herself (us) onpaper and in English, and inSpanglish, and in print.

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