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.

Career

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, 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 book of poems; It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions), was published in 2000. In 2005 she served on the editorial board for a special issue of Letras Femeninas; a publication of the Asociación Internacional De Literatura Femenina Hispánica, Department of Languages and Literature, Arizona State University. Latino Leaders Magazine's 2007 issue profiled her as "one of the most celebrated members of the Puerto Rican literary movement in the Big Apple."

In 2011 Mercado was guest editor of Phati'tude Literary Magazine's winter issue ¿What's in a Nombre? Writing Latin@ Identity in America.

Film, video and radio features include the 1990s Poetry Spots video series directed by Bob Holman, the documentary film, Yari, Yari Pamberi Black Women Writers Dissenting Globalization directed by Jayne Cortez, the 2011 PBS NewsHour documentary special; America Remembers 9/11. and, National Public Radio's, The Talk of the Nation program; Subdued Reflection On Sept. 11 Anniversary in 2012.

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.

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.

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
• 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