Nancy Mercado

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

Nancy Mercado (December, 1959) is a writer, editor, educator and activist whose work focuses on issues of injustice, the environment, and the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States. She forms part of the Nuyorican Movement, a literary genre that branched out from the Beat Movement.

Life and education

Nancy Mercado was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She received a B.A. from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (1982), with a double major in art/art history and Puerto Rican Studies, and her M.A. from New York University in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Script Writing and Cinema Studies (1989). Her doctoral degree was awarded in 2004 in English literature, with a concentration in creative writing, from Binghamton University- SUNY. Mercado's dissertation focused on New York City. She has a long association with the Nuyorican Poets Café and many of the other poets who emerged from it have been an essential part of her development as a writer.

Career

Mercado is the author of It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions) and editor of if the world were mine, a children’s anthology published by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). She was an editor of Long Shot from 1993 until 2004 and the publication’s editor-in-chief for one of those years. She served on the editorial board for a special issue of Letras Femeninas in 2005. Mercado also served as guest editor for Phati'tude Literary Magazine's issue ¿What's in a Nombre? Writing Latin@ Identity in America.

Nancy Mercado began her literary career in 1979. As such, some consider her to be part of the second wave of writers that constitute the Nuyorican literary movement. Of her work (and about Mercado's grandparents, Don Portolo and Milla and her aunt, Juanita), Dr. Marilyn Kiss writes, "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 Marín..." 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."

Mercado's work has been featured on the PBS NewsHour special, America Remembers 9/11. She was inducted into "The Museum of American Poetics" and profiled in Latino Leaders Magazine as "one of the most celebrated members of the Puerto Rican literary movement in the Big Apple."

Bibliography

Books

• It Concerns the Madness. Hoboken: Long Shot Productions, 2000.
• if the world were mine... the young writer's workshop anthology. Editor. Newark: New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication and United Way of Essex and West Hudson, 2003.

Anthologized poetry

• "Going to Work." Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Tenth Anniversary Edition. Editors. Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New Jersey: Melville House Publishers, 2011.
• "The Dead," "El Coto Laurel," "In my Perfect Puerto Rico," "Litany for Change," "Milla," "No Nothin," "On My Return from Puerto Rico." Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry. Editor. Emanuel Xavier. New York: Rebel Satori Press, 2011.
• "I Told You." Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. Editors. Louis Reyes Rivera and Patricia Allen. Newark: The Amiri Baraka Commemoration Committee, 2009.
• "For Jimi Hendrix." Kiss the Sky: Fiction & Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix. Editor. Richard Peabody. New York: Paycock Press, 2007.
• "Milla." Bowery Women Poems. Editors. Bob Holman and Marjorie Tesser. New York: YBK Publishers, Inc., 2006.
• "Salomon Mercado." In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief. Editor. Amy Ouzoonian. 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. Editor. Ishmael Reed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003.
• "Going To Work." Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Editors. Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. 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. Editor. Maria M. Gillan. New York: Viking Penguin, 1999.
• "Don Portolo." Changer L’Amérique: Anthologie De La Poésie Protestataire Des USA. Editors. Eliot Katz and Christian Haye. France: Maison De La Poésie, 1998.
• "On My Return from Puerto Rico to the US." In Defense of Mumia. New York: Writers and Readers Press, 1996.
• "Milla" and "Juanita." ALOUD: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. Editors. Miguel Algarín and Bob Holman. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.

Anthologized fiction

• "The Day They Went Shopping." Powwow, American Short Fiction from Then to Now. Editor. Ishmael Reed. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, Inc., 2009.

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

• "Miguel Piñero." (Biographical entry.) The Encyclopedia of Hispanic-American Literature. Editor. Luz Elena Ramírez. New York: Facts on File, 2009.
• "AIDS in My World." Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community. Editor. Gil L. Robertson IV. 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. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Performing Arts Center Publication, 1996.

Other writings

• Mayhem Poets curriculum

See also

• List of Famous Puerto Ricans
• List of Puerto Rican writers
• The Louder Arts Project
• The Museum of American Poetics
• Napalm Health Spa
• PBS Newshour: America Remembers 911
• Pen American Center Page
• Phati'tude Literary Magazine
• Poets & Writers Page
• PoetsUSA.com
• Puerto Rican literature
• Voices e/Magazine letras
• WBAI Radio Libre, Sunday September 26th 2PM

Further reading

• The Balance of Understanding, Tribes Magazine
• Book Reviewing African-American Style, The Nation
• End of an era Long Shot to cease publishing, The Hudson Reporter
• First on the Listening List, Top of the Reading Stack for 2001, About.com
• Lorenz, Matthias N., ed. (2004). Narrative des Entsetzens: Künstlerische, mediale und intellektuelle Deutungen des 11. Septembers 2001. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2004. 137 and 149. ISBN 3-8260-2777-9
• Making the Decolonized Visible: Puerto Rican Poetry of the Last Four Decades, Centro Journal CUNY
• Nuyoricans jubiliant about Supreme Court nominee, San Francisco Chronicle
• Remembering Gregory Corso, The Hudson Reporter
• Yari Yari Pamberi Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization, Educational Media Reviews