Nancy Mercado

Nancy Mercado at the Nuyorican Poets Café, 2008
Occupation	Writer, poet
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Literary movement	Post Beat, Nuyorican, Postmodernism

Life

Nancy Mercado (December, 1959) was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where “jetties were the bridges {she} crossed,” (as she says in Identity Lessons), she moved to Manhattan after finishing her B.A. at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, with a double major in art/art history and Puerto Rican Studies, and her M.A. at New York University in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Script Writing and Cinema Studies. Her adult experiences and her aesthetic make her truly a Nuyorican, in spite of early geography. Her love for the City is the theme of her forthcoming book of poetry, Rooms for the Living: New York Poems, which was also her dissertation at SUNY Binghamton, where she received her Ph.D. in English literature with a concentration in creative writing. Her long association with both the Nuyorican Poets Café and many of the other poets who emerged from it is an essential part of her development as a writer. Of her first book of poetry, It Concerns the Madness, Miguel Algarín, founder of the Café, says: “the language is crisp, muscular and spiritually medicinal.” Another Nuyorican heavyweight, Pedro Pietri, said of her: “Nancy Mercado is a NuyoCosmoRican who refused to let poetry off the hook…”

If the personal is political, then such verses as “He was forgotten/ before he could be remembered/ by the heads of state/ he provided sugar for” written about her grandfather, “Don Portolo…Director of the Sugar Cane Field Workers” and “Milla can speak of/ The turn of the century land reforms, / Of the blinded enthusiasm/ For a man called Marin…” about her grandmother, “Milla,” and “Juanita…Providing food from soil, / Creating homes from ashes, / Teaching tolerance by living” about her aunt in Puerto Rico, offer testimony to the power of this type of poetic vision. Other poems deal more blatantly with political themes and world events evolving in such places as Somalia, Kosovo and Iraq but it is in the politics of lived experience that Mercado truly shines.”

Career

Mercado is the author of It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions).[1] She served as the editor of, if the world were mine; a children’s anthology published by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), was an editor of Long Shot (1993–2004)[2] and the publication’s editor-in-chief for one of those years. She also served as a contributing editor and writer for Letras Femeninas volume XXXI, No 1: The Journal of the Asociación de Literatura Femenina Hispánica of Arizona State University.

Featured in The Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature (Facts on File) and inducted into The Museum of American Poetics,[3] Mercado is also profiled in Latino Leaders Magazine, Volume 7 No 6 as "one of the most celebrated members of the Puerto Rican literary movement in the Big Apple".

Nancy Mercado began her literary career as a writer in 1979. As such, some consider her to be part of the second wave of writers, along with Martin Espada, that constitute the Nuyorican literary movement. She has toured throughout the US, Europe and in Canada as a featured poet and conference panelist; an abbreviated list includes: Club 350, Toronto Canada * Eastern New York Correctional Facility; a maximum security prison in New York * Espace Simone de Beauvoir, France * Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, Connecticut * Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey * Kutztown State University, Pennsylvania * La Raza Center, San Francisco, California * New York City Book Expo * New York City Town Hall * The Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization Conference in New York University, New York * Pannonica Jazz Club, France * Rutgers University, New Jersey * The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York * The Shakespeare Public Theater, New York * The State University of Illinois * The University of Nantes, France * throughout Wiesbaden, Germany with jazz artist Billy Bang & his Quintet.

Mercado's work has been extensively anthologized. A number of literary magazines have also published her work such as: Columbia University’s City Magazine; El Boletin del Centro from Hunter College-CUNY; GARE MARITIME published in France, New York University publications, Black Renaissance Noire edited by Quincy Troupe; Brownstone Magazine and Gallatin Review; and independent magazines such as, A Gathering of the Tribes; Drum Voices; The Paterson Literary Review; phati'tude Literary Magazine; and Rattapallax, among others.

For ten years she served as the Artistic Director of the Young Life Theatre Group; a young adult theatre group based in New Jersey and funded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. During this time, she authored and directed 7 theatre plays: Palm Trees in the Snow, Chillin, Forever Earth, It is I; Stay Alive!, Planet Earth, Alicia in Projectland coauthored with renown writer Pedro Pietri, and AWAY. Mercado's theatre work has been produced in such venues as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). Her play AWAY was commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of an AIDS awareness and prevention campaign for young women of color making the work accessible to any theatre or community group wanting to stage the play. As such, it continues to be produced by various theatre and community groups, in English and Spanish, throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

Mercado's film credits include two video productions in the Poetry Spots series directed by Bob Holman and the documentary film, Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization directed by Jayne Cortez.

She has served as a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

Nancy Mercado is the co-founder of El Instituto de Cultura Lola Rodríguez de Tió located in New Jersey.

Bibliography

Books

• It Concerns the Madness. Hoboken: Long Shot [4] Productions, 2000.
• if the world were mine. Editor. Newark: New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication

Anthologies

• The Day They Went Shopping. Powwow, American Short Fiction from Then to Now. Ed. Ishmael Reed. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, Inc., 2009.
• I Told You. Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75.Amiri Baraka Newark:Independent Publication, 2009.
• For Jimi Hendrix. Kiss the Sky: Fiction & Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix. New York: Paycock Press, 2007.
• Milla. Bowery Women Poems.[5] New York: YBK Publishers, Inc., 2006.
• Salomon Mercado. In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief. New York: Foothills Publishing and Sherman Asher Press, 2005.
• Jetties were the Bridges I Crossed, Latino Literature Today. New York: Longman, 2004.
• Milla. From Totems To Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. Ed. Ishmael Reed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003.
• Going To Work. Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. 9/11 New Jersey: Melville House Publishers, 2002.
• Justice In The Techno Age and Lyric For A New Life. Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. Illinois: Third World Press, 2001.
• Somalia. Bum Rush The Page: A Def Jam. New York: Crown Publishing, 2001.
• Jetties Were The Bridges I Crossed. Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to be American. New York: Viking Penguin, 1999.
• Don Portolo. Changer L’Amérique Anthologie De La Poésie Protestataire Des USA. France: Maison De La Poésie, 1998.
• On My Return From Puerto Rico To The US. In Defense Of Mumia.Mumia Abu-Jamal New York: Writers and Readers Press, 1996.
• Milla, and Juanita. ALOUD, Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Café. Nuyorican Poets Café New York: Henry Holt, 1994.

One-act plays

• Palm Trees in the Snow (1989)
• Chillin (1990)
• Forever Earth (1991)
• It is I; Stay Alive! (1992)
• Planet Earth (1993)
• Alicia in Projectland coauthored with Pedro Pietri (1994)
• AWAY 1996)

Essays

• Biographical entry of Miguel Piñero. The Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature. New York: Facts on File, 2009.
• AIDS in My World. Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community. Los Angeles, California: Agate Publishers, 2006.
• About Face: My Brief Journey as a Female Puerto Rican Poet. Gare Maritime, Nantes, France: Maison de la Poesie, 2000.
• Youth Performance Workshops Reach Students in Elizabeth. Resource, New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication, Newark, NJ, 1996.

Other writings

• Mayhem Poets curriculum

See also

• La Red Biografica de Puerto Rico
• The Louder Arts Project
• The Nation
• Pen American Center Page
• Poets & Writers Page
• PoetsUSA
• Voices e/Magazine Letras
• WBAI Radio Libre, Sunday September 26th 2PM

Resources

• Ramirez, Luz Elena (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature. New York: Facts on File, 2009. ISBN 0-8160-6084-3

Further reading

• The Balance of Understanding
• A Blow by Blow, Volume by Volume History of Long Shot
• End of an era Long Shot to cease publishing
• First on the Listening List, Top of the Reading Stack for 2001
• Making the Decolonized Visible: Puerto Rican Poetry of the Last Four Decades
• Nuyoricans jubiliant about Supreme Court nominee
• Remembering Gregory Corso