Puerto Rican Literature - Modern and Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature

Modern and Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature

After a vibrant nationalist tradition of Puerto Rican writers from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the island has maintained a solid production of outstanding authors. Oftentimes, these writers are cataloged by decade into "generations" (for example, writers who got their start in the 1950s are identified as "the Generation of 1950"). Some highly representative writers from the early and mid-20th century were: Juan Antonio Corretjer, Luis Lloréns Torres, Luis Palés Matos, Enrique Laguerre, and Francisco Matos Paoli. These Puerto Rican writers wrote in Spanish and reflected a literary Latin American tradition, and offered a variety of universal and social themes. Some of the most important writers who got their start in the 1950s were José Luis González, René Marqués, Pedro Juan Soto, and Emilio Díaz Valcárcel. Writers who started in the 1960s and 1970s included Carmen Lugo Filippi, Lourdes Vázquez, Rosario Ferré, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, Ángel Encarnación, Edgardo Sanabria Santaliz, Olga Nolla, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, and Luis López Nieves. Writers whose careers took off in the 1980s and 1990s include Ana Lydia Vega, Giannina Braschi, Mayra Santos-Febres, and Luz María Umpierre. New and emerging voices on the island include Rafael Acevedo, Moisés Agosto, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Ana María Fuster Lavín, Zoé Jiménez Corretjer, Alberto Martínez Márquez, Maribel Ortiz, Max Resto, and José E. Santos, while Spanish-language writers such as Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Angel Lozada, Benito Pastoriza Iyodo, and Alfredo Villanueva Collado write and publish their works in the U.S., Puerto Rican literature in English continues to flourish with the important contributions of authors such as Erika Lopez and Ernesto Quiñonez.

Numerous anthologies focus on the work of Puerto Rican writers. Some of these are Literatura y narrativa puertorriqueña: La escritura entre siglos edited by Mario Cancel; Literatura puertorriqueña del siglo XX: Antología edited by Mercedes López Baralt; and Los otros cuerpos: Antología de temática gay, lésbica y queer desde Puerto Rico y su diáspora, edited by David Caleb Acevedo, Moisés Agosto, and Luis Negrón, which focuses on LGBT Puerto Rican literature.

A variety of essayists and columnists further enrich Puerto Rican letters. The more than 300 editorials published by Nelson Antonio Denis, Esq. in El Diario La Prensa about the New York/Puerto Rican diaspora, were recognized with repeated "Best Editorial Writing" Awards from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Dr. Delma S. Arrigoitia's written works has covered the life and works of some of Puerto Rico's most prominent politicians of the early 20th century.