Annotations for People: Pietri-pedro 1944-2004

For years, Latino poetry in New York City was dominated by the Nuyorican School of Poets. Theirs was and is a street-wise poetry characterized by strong cultural pride presented in dramatic urban settings by poets such as Miguel Algarín, Pedro Pietri and Bimbo Rivas. Today, another crop of Puerto Rican poets is making waves in the Big Apple. But what's different about this group is that they're all women from New York City. Mario Murillo prepared this report.

Women have been traditionally storytellers and have been in a very close relationship with the oral tradition because they were the grandmothers and the mothers that told us stories and sang us songs and recite poems to us when we were small.

The wives of the dictators do not sit home and embroider, nor do they answer when their husbands return in full uniform from a kill and ask and what have you been doing? I have been doing the secret things that witches do. They are busy cutting ribbons.

You tried to kill the wild woman fused into my little girl, the one you couldn't love while claiming to. So you held me down and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with your sharp Swiss knife while whispering seductively in my face.

Myrna Nieves, Maritza Arrastia and Ana Lopez Betancourt, three Puerto Rican poets living and working in New York City. Together they're carving a niche for Puerto Rican women writers in an arena traditionally dominated by men. The three poets founded the Atabex literature collection, which publishes the work of Puerto Rican women writers. Atabex comes from the Taino word meaning mother of the universe. Myrna Nieves says they're celebrating the diversity of writers coming from the community.

Now, when we talk about the Boys of Women writers, we are not talking about a voice, we are talking about really about the chorus. So it's not one voice that only presents a strong and potent women, but women in different stages of development, women from different social classes, women that has been recent in the immigration experience from Puerto Rico. It is very important that the leadership produced by women is made public.

I explore grief, anger, rage in safe settings at home with Lynn, surrounded by books and African relics. But I don't feel safe. I'm afraid. I'm afraid my rage will.. One of the things my grandmother would say to us as was children speak when the chicken takes a leak. Never. Chickens don't take a leak.

Poet and educator, Ana Lopez Betancourt.

So children have no voices. Girl children have less voices and women should never be heard. So there's a lot, of course there's rage and there's a lot of stuff to explore.

Among the things to explore is the challenge of being an immigrant woman in a male-dominated culture. Once again, poet Myrna Nieves.

She has to defend this culture and at the same time in her work, she has to reexamine the culture with a critical eye and produce alternative cultural forms that are more harmonious and that give her a more just and better place in society.

[Reciting poetry] When you finally let me into your games, I was the Indian and you the cowboy. Yours were the newfangled pistols, the cherry's batch which authorized your kicks and punches. Yours were the bows and arrows you lent me because you didn't like to play the Indian.

Theater Director and poet Maria Mar.

We are powerful. We are doing things. We're really the ones, the women are shaping the community and keeping it alive and the structure of community alive. But we don't perceive our power and strength because there are a lot of ghosts between our powerful self and our self-image. [Reciting poetry] Come and cross over to this side of the ocean. But you are like I am. One more Indian destined to lose in the mortal game played in the wild west north of the Americas.

The Atabex literature collection will publish the work of many other Puerto Rican women in the coming months, including an anthology of poetry expected to be released this winter. For Latino USA, I'm Mario Murillo.