Prompted by Puerto Rico’s political and colonial status, NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES was created by Carmen Pietri and Vagabond Beaumont to provide a space and place for Puerto Rican literature.

Since the 1898 U.S. invasion and colonization of the Puerto Rican islands, “Boricuas” (the tribal name that Puerto Ricans tend to call themselves) have been migrating to the continental U.S. in trickles, streams, and tides. This is why today more Boricuas live stateside than in Puerto Rico. During the twentieth century, New York City was the primary destination of this colonial migration, so most Boricua family histories spanning more than a generation or two stateside have roots in the City.

This colonial process of eviction, however, is not simply migration. Like North American Indians, Boricuas live on and off the “Res,” so to speak, by design of governmental policies and economic practices aimed at removing them from their homeland. This forced removal is also virtual; all Boricuas, whether on or off the islands, endure a spiritual alienation not only from their ancestral land, but also from their own culture, their own history, and their own natural right to sovereignty.

Initially used as a term of derision, Nuyorican was appropriated and redefined into a moniker of self-affirmation and artistic self-determination during New York City’s Civil Rights era social movements. Historically, Nuyorican is therefore a politicized aesthetic akin to the Black Arts Movement of the same period.

Today, Nuyorican is also a sovereign identity within a rich cultural, political, and intellectual tradition that tests and transcends the real and imaginary boundaries between colony and metropole, between Spanish and English, between past, present, and future possibilities. Nuyorican signifies an antidote to the existential schizophrenia and amnesia colonialism spawns. Nuyorican music, dance, plastic arts, and literature signify an organic call and response rhythm with the islands, other diasporas, and all the other tribes of all multi-nation cities. Nuyorican signifies survival in style, despite the odds. Nuyorican signifies decolonial desire, expressed in artistic modalities and rituals that trespass generic boundaries and national borders at will, by whatever means necessary.

2Leaf Press has published the following books under NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES: HEY YO! YO SOY! 40 YEARS OF NUYORICAN STREET POETRY, A BILINGUAL EDITION (2012), LAST OF THE PO’RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS (2013), BORICUA PASSPORT (2014), and OUR NUYORICAN THING: THE BIRTH OF A SELF-MADE IDENTITY (2014).

The bases are always loaded at the NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES. The games will be played all day, every day, in an abandoned lot in your imagination. There will be no umpires. The NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES is a BYO imaginary hot dog and mustard affair. For more information, contact us at 2lpseries [AT] 2leafpress [DOT] org.