According to Donald E. Herdeck, editor of a critical encyclopedia on Caribbean writers, writers like Piri Thomas and Victor Hernández Cruz have been at the forefront of a movement of "neo-rican" writers. The Neorican (or Nurican or Nuyorican) writers are Puerto Ricans, says Faythe E. Turner, "who have been born or have spent their formative years on the United States mainland, who write in an idiomatic English influenced by Spanish and Black English, and who derive mainly from the working class. Their literature," she continues, "is a Puerto Rican examination of their status on the mainland, the reality of life here, and the traditions they consider to be part of their familial past ..." While Thomas has gained eminence through his novels Down These Mean Streets (1967) and Savior, Savior Hold My Hand (1972), Cruz's forté is poetry, written primarily in English rather than in Spanish.

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