At the end of Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, Xiomara competes in a slam competition at the famed Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe. This is a real place, familiar to New Yorkers and lovers of literature and poetry worldwide; thus, we will briefly look at what attracts artists to this East Village cafe.
Founded in 1973 by Puerto Rican poet Miguel Algarin and friends, the Cafe was conceived as a place for creators, most of them non-white, to come together. It was held salon-style in Algarin’s East Village living room until 1981 (the East Village was a Puerto Rican neighborhood at the time), when the amount of artists and audience members necessitated a larger space. The Cafe purchased a former tenement building at 236 East 3rd Street, where it has been ever since. The most iconic space in the cafe was/is the Open Room, a space for anyone, having signed up on a first-come-first-go basis, to present their works to the public.
The Cafe attracted playwrights, poets, and musicians of color; Allen Ginsberg once called it “the most integrated place on the planet.” The term “Nuyorican,” which originated in the late 1960s/early 1970s, refers to people who are of Puerto Rocan descent living in or near New York City. While initially somewhat of an insult, it was co-opted by artists to become a term of pride and community. Notable voices who have performed at the Cafe include Ntozake Shange, Paul Beatty, Amiri Baraka, and Miguel Pinero.
Algarin wrote that its philosophy and purpose “has always been to reveal poetry as a living art,” and this is something Acevedo felt herself when, as a 15-year-old, she performed for the first time at the Cafe. She explained to the New York Times that there is a sense of “walking into a lineage” of Latinx artists, that there’s “something being passed down.” The article explains that Acevedo, “recalled learning about ‘declamación,’ a cousin of spoken word poetry that is performed in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America. ‘What we name spoken word or slam or esto y lo otro, we have had names for,’ she said. The magic of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was how it blended old-world and new, Acevedo said. It was ‘this space that, yes, was in conversation with hip-hop. Yes, was in conversation with the beat poets. But was also in conversation with something that was inherently Puerto Rican, inherently Caribbean, inherently Latinx’.”
Today, the Cafe continues to host concerts, poetry slams, theatrical performances, visual art exhibits, and more. According to its website, “Our educational programs (which are funded in part by the city and state of New York and the NEA) provide literacy and public speaking to thousands of students and many school groups each year. Our theater program has been awarded over 30 Audelco Awards and was honored with an OBIE Grant for Excellence in Theater.”
