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Tato Laviera Quotes (1950-2013)
Poet, Playwright
About Tato Laviera
Jesús Abraham "Tato" Laviera (September 5, 1950 – November 1, 2013) was a Hispanic poet and playwright in the United States.
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“Puerto Rico in particular intertwines Caribbean Black Spanish. We dare to claim it. It is a source of pride and we are not linguistically crippled. My claim to fame is I can experiment, and sound intelligent with my linguistic experiments.”
“In the Lower East Side, the Puerto Ricans had already been ‘project-ed.’ The people were used to living in the projects. They worked on ships on South Street or in hotels. There were a lot of people collecting records, so music became a really important connection between New York City and Puerto Rico. We spoke English in the street and Spanish at home. A lot of music from Puerto Rico was played in the streets and in people’s homes. We listened to Bomba, Plena, pop music and Salsa.”
Quotes About Tato Laviera
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Melissa Castillo-Garsow on Tato Laviera
“Her (Sandra María Esteves's) struggle for language, like Tato Laviera's, is not just linguistic, cultural or national, but also racial.”
Sandra María Esteves interview on Tato Laviera
“When I started writing, there were only two women writers that I knew: Lorraine Sutton and Margie Simmons. There were very few Latinas writing in English... So when I started, I was mainly surrounded by men-Pedro Pietri, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Lucky Cienfuegos, Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero, Tato Laviera. Many of them had books already published. I was like a sponge, absorbing different things from these male contemporaries.”
About Tato Laviera
Jesús Abraham "Tato" Laviera (September 5, 1950 – November 1, 2013) was a Hispanic poet and playwright in the United States.