Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons^™

Dedicated to the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos (1914-1953), Sherezada (Chiqui) Vicioso's evocation of New York City conjures up a sensory experience of the bustling metropolis alongside references to its international, and especially Latino, ingredients. Vicioso depicts a city that is infused with but strangely unaware of its Hispanic heritage, which her enumeration of food, music, contraband, Afro-Caribbean spirits, and expatriates calls to the surface. The poem’s minimal punctuation, idiosyncratic line- and word-divisions, wordplay, blend of archaic and current diction, and sporadically disjointed syntax underscore a crowded, onrushing, almost incantatory medley of past and present, local and transnational. …

Rosario Ferré’s position in one of Puerto Rico’s most important families and her status as one of the island’s most prolific and most vocally feminist authors render iconic her critiques of Puerto Rican “free association.” But as they struggle to disengage the binary structures of postcolonial patriarchy that constrain them, the women of Eccentric Neighborhoods walk in on possibilities rarely admitted in Ferré’s extensive body of work: English, statehood, and desire between women. The appeal of the titular eccentricity of places and people in Eccentric Neighborhoods is a new order of decentralized parity and plurality, a Caribbean feminist democratic ideal. …