Nuyorican is a portmanteau word blending "New York" and "Puerto Rican", referring to Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, their culture, or their descendants. This term is sometimes used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeastern US Mainland outside New York State as well. The term is also used by Islander Puerto Ricans to differentiate those of Puerto Rican descent from the Puerto Rico–born.
Ricardo Jiménez was a Puerto Rican member of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña who was sentenced to 90 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges. He was sentenced on February 18, 1981, and incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison. However, he was released early from prison, after President Bill Clinton extended a clemency offer to him on September 7, 1999.
Puerto Rican literature is the body of literature produced by writers of Puerto Rican descent. It evolved from the art of oral storytelling. Written works by the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico were originally prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government.
Larry McKeon was an American politician who served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from Chicago. Serving from January 1997 to January 2007, he was the first-ever openly gay member of the Illinois General Assembly and was also HIV-positive.
Roberto Clemente Community Academy is a public 4–year high school located in the West Town community area of Chicago, Illinois. Operated by the Chicago Public Schools, the school is named for Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Enrique Clemente (1934–1972).
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is a gay Puerto Rican author, scholar, and performer. He is better known as Larry La Fountain. He has received several awards for his creative writing and scholarship as well as for his work with Latino and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students. He currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Jorge B. Merced is a New York-based Puerto Rican actor, theatre director, and gay activist. He is associate artistic director of Pregones Theater, a bilingual (Spanish/English) Puerto Rican/Latino theater company located near Hostos Community College in the Bronx, New York City. He is best known for his role as Loca la de la locura [The Queen of Madness] in Pregones's play El bolero fue mi ruina [The Bolero Was My Downfall].
Carlos Luis "Charlie" Vázquez is a self-identified queer American artist, writer, and musician of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent and a New York Foundation For The Arts and NEA Fellow for poetry. He is also the editor of Fireking Press, where he has published a novel and a book of short stories. He serves as the deputy director of the Bronx Council on the Arts, and runs the group's writing center. His fiction, erotica and essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, magazines, and websites. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner, poet John Williams.
Nemir Matos Cintrón is a Puerto Rican author who resides in Florida. She has published several books of poetry and parts of a novel. She has openly thematized her lesbianism in much of her work.
Manuel Ramos Otero was a Puerto Rican writer. He is widely considered to be the most important openly gay twentieth-century Puerto Rican writer who wrote in Spanish, and his work was often controversial due to its sexual and political content. Ramos Otero died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, due to complications from AIDS.
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and scholar. Her work is focused on a comparative exploration of coloniality, primarily in Puerto Rico and the United States, with special attention given to the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and politics. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She has also contributed to the Huffington Post, El Diario/La Prensa, and 80 Grados, and since 2008 has served as a Global Expert for the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism. She is one of the best-known Puerto Rican lesbian artists currently living in the United States.
Catiria Reyes, better known as Lady Catiria, was a Puerto Rican drag performer, film actress, and transgender beauty pageant winner. She was one of the main performers at the New York City Latino nightclub La Escuelita, where she entertained crowds for almost two decades. She was the first person to win two titles at the Miss Continental pageant in Chicago. Towards the end of her life, she became an advocate for AIDS awareness.
Pedro Julio Serrano is a gay and HIV+ human rights activist and president of Puerto Rico Para Todes, a non-profit LGBTQ+ and social justice advocacy organization founded in 2003. He is a former advisor to former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. He served, for more than three years, as executive director of Programa Vida and Clínica Transalud of the Municipality of San Juan. He now works as Director of Development at Waves Ahead.
Ramón Arroyo was an American playwright, poet and scholar of Puerto Rican descent who wrote numerous books and received many literary awards. He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Toledo in Ohio. His work deals extensively with issues of immigration, Latino culture, and homosexuality. Arroyo was openly gay and frequently wrote self-reflexive, autobiographical texts. He was the long-term partner of the American poet Glenn Sheldon.
Puerto Ricans in Chicago are individuals residing in Chicago with ancestral ties to the island of Puerto Rico. Over more than seventy years, they have made significant contributions to the economic, social, and cultural fabric of the city. This is known as the city of multiple cultures.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Puerto Rico have gained some legal rights in recent years. Same sex relationships have been legal in Puerto Rico since 2003, and same-sex marriage and adoptions are also permitted. U.S. federal hate crime laws apply in Puerto Rico.
Orlando Cruz is a Puerto Rican professional boxer. As an amateur, he represented Puerto Rico at the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia.
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
Ortez Alderson was an American AIDS, gay rights, and anti-war activist and actor. A member of LGBT community, he was a leader of the Black Caucus of the Chicago Gay Liberation Front, which later became the Third World Gay Revolution, and served a federal prison sentence for destroying files related to the draft for the Vietnam War. In 1987, he was one of the founding members of ACT UP in New York City, and helped to establish its Majority Action Committee representing people of color with HIV and AIDS. Regarded as a "radical elder" within ACT UP, he was involved in organizing numerous demonstrations in the fight for access to healthcare and treatments for people with AIDS, and participated in the group's meetings with NYC Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph as well as the FDA. In 1989, he moved back to Chicago and helped to organize the People of Color and AIDS Conference the following year. He died of complications from AIDS in 1990, and was inducted posthumously into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.
