Congrats to J.L. Torres’ review in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise as noted below!
“Boricua Passport” by J.L. Torres, 2Leaf Press, 2014
MARILYN McCABE | ADIRONDACK DAILY ENTERPRISE | Special to the Enterprise, Adirondack Center for Writing
Some of the richest literature of the world is the literature of exile – artists driven from their homelands by war or hatred and who cannot return seem to wring passion from the loss and pour it into their art. But departure inevitably changes one, and time inevitably changes place, so return is never possible.
But for J.L. Torres the situation is even a bit more grievous – he is of American roots that are not considered “American:” the “foreign” terra of Puerto Rico. Of the “United States” but not.
In his useful and interesting introduction to his poetry collection “Boricua Passport,” Torres, a professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, quickly sketches the history of Puerto Rico and the United States, and he outlines his own neither-here-nor-thereness. He finds himself more Bronxian than either Puerto Rican or American. But even returning to his Bronx childhood seems alienating, as we learn in “Walking the Ghetto with Miguel and Piri:” “From a distance I sense/pain zig-zagging down the street,/none of us any closer to home.”>>READ MORE
