Remembering Julia de Burgos: A Poet in New York

Puerto Rico has had its share of revolutionaries who helped forge a unique national identity. One outstading rebel was Julia de Burgos, a woman who appreciated and fought for her Puerto Rican, and African-in-the-Americas heritage. She was born into poverty, like many who faced the economic obstacles created by racism. She actively supported the independence movement in Puerto Rico She endorsed national sovereignty as a means to preserve and celebrate the land and the Puerto Rican culture, which had suffered the effects of North American military occupation.

Born near the town of Carolina, Puerto Rico, Burgos pursued her education only with the help of donations made by people in her town. In 1931 she entered the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan and obtained her certification as a teacher in two years. Her experiences as a teacher facilitated intellectual, cultural and social development. Teaching the poor people of the Boriqua countryside solidified her desire for independence, as she saw first-hand the effects of colonization and foreign developers who did not concern themselves with the well-being of the average Puerto RIcan. Her outrage at these conditions led her to write poetry. Burgos inspired future feminist writers in the rest of the 20th century. "Writing in the 1930s through the 1950s," declared a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "de Burgos was ahead of her time in grasping connections between history, the body, politics, love, self-negation and feminism that would later prove to be the foundations for writers like [Adrienne] Rich and [Sylvia] Plath."

In keeping with a common twentieth-century image of literary Bohemianism, Burgos was an alcoholic who ultimately died of cirrhosis of the liver. She was a recluse during much of the 40Õs. In May 1953, her body was found on a Harlem street. Because she had no identification, she was buried in a public cemetary in New York. However, a committee was formed to exhume her body and carry it back to Puerto Rico, where Burgos requested that she be buried. JuliaÕs body finally returned to the island of her birth on September 6, 1953. She received last honors from the Sociedad de Periodistas (Society of Journalists) and entered her final rest in the municipal cemetery at Carolina.

Unfortunately, only after her death did Julia de Burgos garner widespread respect and renown from Puerto Ricans and Americans more generally. Although many prominent Latino/a writers already knew of her talents, her poetry has received insufficient attention, despite the publication of her complete bilingual edition of her poetry in 1997, edited by Jack AgŸeros. In the 1980Õs, Public School #9 in El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem, adopted a bilingual Spanish-English curriculum and took on the name, the Julia de Burgos School. Similarly, the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center occupies the first floor of a four-story building in El Barrio, and features a High School, an Art Gallery and a Community Space.