What is a Latinx? Is that some new gender? Or a new race? Its hard to keep up with all the cool new identities and genders these days.
1
If you’re going to do this, why not begin with using proper Spanish? “El space” is not.
Unless I’m missing something here and there’s an explanation somewhere that I’ve missed because this is such a ridiculous title that I just had to act on my first impulse and placed the cart before the horse.
But I just can’t help it: This is what the recently deceased linguistic anthropologist, the brilliant Jane Hill, termed “mock Spanish” and it’s racializing. You appropriate an incorrect form of the language, use it, and associate it with Latinxs, thus disparaging both their linguistic varieties and them as a community of speakers.
1
Next time I go to NYC, I want to visit this café. It seems like a positive resistance to the displacement of creatives from NYC. And it is a place of resistance for the displacement out of the city of Puerto Ricans, or Nuyoricans by other Hispanics or Latinx (what is the plural for this new term that further marginalizes those who share a common language, Spanish?). There is a difference in culture between those born or raised in NYC and those born and raised in Puerto Rico. Both are, however, born American citizens and this fact is why other Hispanics resent Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans. Soon, it will not be a Nuyorican café as the Dominican poet who performed there illuminates. The same happened with El Museo del Barrio.
1
Great column! Yes, please, would love to receive it as a newsletter.
2
Lucky CienFuegos's hair is everything.
3
I agree Kevin....I was a Black girl from Harlem/the Bronx most of my friends were Puerto Rican so I embraced everything Puerto Rican....loved the music, the food, the friends and families, the books, and these guys. I miss the vibe...glad to see these guys still involved.
I was thrilled to see these photos of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Miguel Algarín, a teacher of mine at Livingston College/ Rutgers University, brought our class on a field trip to the cafe in 1978. What an experience! I was a sheltered, 17-year-old, white kid from the suburbs air-dropped into another world. I read Miguel Piñero's Short Eyes aloud and held hands with Allen Ginsberg in silence as we meditated. My head spun. I'll never forget Miguel Algarín or the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
5