BARRIO, BODEGA, AND BOTANICA AESTHETICS

Abstract

This essay explores notions of Nuyorican, or Diasporic Puerto Rican, culture found in New York as expressed in literature, poetry, and memoir. The concept of the Latino imaginary is invoked to both explain and critically analyze the variety of transnational, especially Atlantic, inflections that are drawn upon by Puerto Rican authors locating a tropical identity in urban America through their writing. Yoruba religious culture, as reinterpreted by the Caribbean folk religion of Santería, becomes an avenue for exploring how transatlantic concepts of the journey and home help to formulate Nuyorican identity and community making through literature. A comparative analysis of Diasporic traditions found in writing, religious practice, and cultural concepts between the Yoruba in Nigeria and Puerto Ricans in the US illuminate the ways in which vernacular traditions render the social imagination as a pivotal strategy for gaining social agency in post-colonial contexts.

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