Victor Hernández Cruz writes out of the Nuyorican (sometimes called Neorican or Nurican) tradition. Either born in the United States, or born in Puerto Rico and raised on the mainland, Nuyorican writers infuse their adopted English language with Spanish and Black English to craft poems and stories about their experience on the United States' mainland. Puerto Ricans have a mixture of Taino, Arawak, Spanish, and African blood. The Taino and Arawak are native peoples that Ponce de Leon largely annihilated before bringing in African slaves to work the Spaniards' sugar plantations.

Because the vast majority of Puerto Ricans who moved to the mainland after World War II in search of economic opportunity settled in New York City or northern New Jersey, their poems and stories often address urban subjects and the difficulties of negotiating a new culture. The implicit subject of much Nuyorican writing...