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Michele Carlo | |
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| Born | |
| Nationality | Puerto Rican-American (Latina) |
| Education | School of Visual Arts, New York City, New York |
| Occupation(s) | Author and Performance Artist |
Michele Carlo is an author, performer, and artist based in New York City. Her work focuses on personal experiences as a Latina and self-proclaimed Nuyorican growing up and living within New York City.
The daughter of two Puerto Rican parents from Spanish Harlem, Michele Carlo grew up with her family in a primarily Italian and Irish neighborhood in the East Bronx. [1] Much of her later artistic work focuses on issues of identity stemming from childhood experiences in the Bronx.
Carlo attended New York City Community College for a year before being accepted into the School of Visual Arts. She obtained the position of assistant art director at an advertising agency, however after participating in a production of Guys & Dolls, Carlo decided to suspend her pursuit of a career in visual arts in favor of one in acting and performance. In 1995, she appeared in the independent film Living in Oblivion . From 1995 to roughly 2004, Carlo was a regular participant in productions at Surf Reality, an underground venue on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Beginning in the mid-2000s, she began appearing at performance storytelling events hosted by The Moth, The Liar Show, and Literary Deathmatch. Carlo published her memoir, Fish Out of Agua: My Life on Neither Side of the (Subway) Tracks, [2] in 2010. Her essays and stories have also been published in the Huffington Post and SMITH magazines, Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul and Lost & Found: Stories from New York.
Awards/Recognitions
Most of Michele Carlo's work is heavily influenced by her upbringing in a predominantly Italian and Irish neighborhood in the East Bronx, and her experiences navigating New York City as a Latina artist of Puerto Rican descent ever since. In Carlo's 2010 memoir, Fish Out of Agua, she calls herself a "double outsider:" [3] Her freckles and curly red hair caused people to often mistake her as white, much to the dismay of her proudly Spanish-speaking relatives, yet she finds that she is not white enough for her friends and schoolmates. At one point she recalls her father telling other residents of their neighborhood that although they may be Puerto Rican, their family was from the "Italian part" of Puerto Rico, in an attempt to avoid ostracism and prejudice. Later, she recalls getting lost at a Puerto Rican Day parade and a voice on the loudspeaker announcing, "'Will the family who brought the little redheaded white girl please come pick her up?' I looked around. I am at the bandstand! I am that lost girl!" [3] In her memoir, Carlo's descriptions of such memories use both intimately personal memories as well as humor in order to chronicle a childhood of trying to find some sort of balance in her identity.
"New York is like a shark," she says in an article by Curbed New York. "If it stops moving, it dies." [4] In her latest project, There Goes the Neighborhood, Carlo continues to use her own experiences to reflect New York City's ever-evolving nature. The 55-minute solo performance revolves around her struggle to find a new apartment after being forced out of the one she had lived in for twenty years, and in doing so touches on issues of gentrification in Brooklyn. At one point in the show, she describes riding in a car with a realtor who, not realizing that Carlo herself is Puerto Rican, tells her, "I don't recommend that you take an apartment above 10th street, dear...That's where all the Puerto Ricans live." This personal account provides evidence of the physical and social boundaries that obviously still exist within many New York neighborhoods, and in doing so speaks directly to Carlo's Latinx audience (especially those who may be white-passing).
In the article by Curbed New York, she also cites the formation of the Prospect Park Alliance and its successful efforts at cleaning up the park and the surrounding area as a tipping point for Brooklyn's gentrification. "Nobody wants to be chased up five flights of stairs screaming, 'Open the door' because you're about to be jumped. but why can't there be some kind of common ground that respects the elderly and longtime residents that do not have the wherewithal or desire to relocate? How is it right to tell a family, 'Well now that the neighborhood's safer, and the park is clean and the schools are better, you don't get to live here anymore.'" [4] In her observations of this transformation, Carlo questions the motives of those who led the effort to make this area "the beautiful oasis it is today." In cleaning up the area surrounding Prospect Park, did such groups also hope to scrub out long-time residents and racial minorities, as well as the unique culture they had created? Overall, reflections on the past in There Goes the Neighborhood and Carlo's other works provide more than just moments of nostalgia for New York natives. They chronicle the evolution of an entire city, and how these changes affect entire groups of people and the Latinx community as a whole.
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the east and north. Despite its name, it is generally not considered to be a part of Harlem proper, but it is one of the neighborhoods included in Greater Harlem.
Pelham Gardens is a neighborhood located in the Northeast section of the Bronx, New York City. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are East Gun Hill Road to the north and east, Pelham Parkway to the south, and the IRT Dyre Avenue Line to the west ending at the esplanade. Eastchester Road is the primary thoroughfare through Pelham Gardens.
Wakefield is a working-class and middle-class section of the northern borough of the Bronx in New York City. It is bounded by the city's border with Westchester County to the north, East 222nd Street to the south, and the Bronx River Parkway to the west.
Soundview is a neighborhood on the Clason Point peninsula, on the southern section of the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are the Cross-Bronx Expressway to the north, White Plains Road to the east, Lacombe Avenue to the south, and the Bronx River to the west. The Bruckner Expressway bisects the neighborhood horizontally along the center and the Bronx River Parkway runs north to south. Soundview Avenue is the primary thoroughfare through Soundview.
Tremont is a residential neighborhood in the West Bronx, New York City. Its boundaries are East 181st Street to the north, Third Avenue to the east, the Cross-Bronx Expressway to the south, and the Grand Concourse to the west. East Tremont Avenue is the primary thoroughfare through Tremont.
Norwood, also known as Bainbridge, is a working-class residential neighborhood in the northwest Bronx, New York City. It is bound by Van Cortlandt Park and Woodlawn Cemetery to the north, the Bronx River to the east, and Mosholu Parkway to the southwest. The area is dominated topographically by what was once Valentine's Hill, the highest point being near the intersection of 210th Street and Bainbridge Avenue, where Gun Hill Road intersects, and around the Montefiore Medical Center, the largest landowner and employer of the neighborhood. Norwood's main commercial arteries are Gun Hill Road, Jerome Avenue, Webster Avenue, and Bainbridge Avenue.
Dominican Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Dominican Republic. The word may refer to someone born in the United States of Dominican descent or to someone who has migrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. As of 2021, there were approximately 2.4 million people of Dominican descent in the United States, including both native and foreign-born. They are the second largest Hispanic groups in the Northeastern region of the United States and the fifth-largest Latin American group, after Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans and Cubans.
Caridad de la Luz, a.k.a. "La Bruja", is a Nuyorican poet, playwright, actress and activist. She is considered one of the leading spoken word poets in the world. In 2005, El Diario La Prensa, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York City, named De la Luz as one of the "Fifty Most Distinguished Latinas in the United States".
Puerto Ricans have both immigrated and migrated to New York City. The first group of Puerto Ricans immigrated to New York City in the mid-19th century when Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony and its people Spanish subjects. The following wave of Puerto Ricans to move to New York City did so after the Spanish–American War in 1898. Puerto Ricans were no longer Spanish subjects and citizens of Spain, they were now Puerto Rican citizens of an American possession and needed passports to travel to the Contiguous United States.
Pelham Parkway is a working- and middle-class residential neighborhood geographically located in the center of the Bronx, a borough of New York City in the United States. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Waring Avenue to the north, the IRT Dyre Avenue Line tracks to the east, Neill Avenue to the South, and Bronx River Parkway to the west. White Plains Road is the primary commercial thoroughfare through Pelham Parkway. The neighborhood is named after Pelham Parkway, a major west–east parkway that travels through the East Bronx.
Castle Hill is a neighborhood located in the southeast section of the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Its boundaries are Waterbury Avenue and Westchester Avenue to the north, Westchester Creek to the east, the East River to the south, and White Plains Road to the west. Unionport is a subsection of Castle Hill, typically considered north of Lafayette Avenue.
Pura Teresa Belpré y Nogueras was an Afro-Puerto Rican educator who served as the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. She was also a writer, collector of folktales, and puppeteer.
Melissa Mark-Viverito is an American Democratic politician and former speaker of the New York City Council from 2014 to 2017, as well as councilmember for the 8th district from 2006 to 2017, representing Concourse, Concourse Village, East Harlem, Highbridge, Longwood, Mott Haven, Port Morris, and Randall's Island.
Since its founding in 1625 by Dutch traders as New Amsterdam, New York City has been a major destination for immigrants of many nationalities who have formed ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods dominated by one ethnicity. Freed African American slaves also moved to New York City in the Great Migration and the later Second Great Migration and formed ethnic enclaves. These neighborhoods are set apart from the main city by differences such as food, goods for sale, or even language. Ethnic enclaves provide inhabitants security in work and social opportunities, but limit economic opportunities, do not encourage the development of English speaking, and keep immigrants in their own culture.
Nicholasa Mohr is one of the best known Nuyorican writers, born in the United States to Puerto Rican parents. In 1973, she became the first Nuyorican woman in the 20th century to have her literary works published by the major commercial publishing houses, and has had the longest creative writing career of any Nuyorican female writer for these publishing houses. She centers her works on the female experience as a child and adult in Puerto Rican communities in New York City, with much of writing containing semi-autobiographical content. In addition to her prominent novels and short stories, she has written screenplays, plays, and television scripts.
Sandra María Esteves is a Latina poet and graphic artist. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and is one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement. She has published collections of poetry and has conducted literary programs at New York City Board of Education, the Caribbean Cultural Center, and El Museo del Barrio. Esteves has served as the executive director of the African Caribbean Poetry Theater. She is the author of Bluestown Mockinbird Mambo and Yerba Buena. She lives in the Bronx.
Caribbean immigration to New York City has been prevalent since the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This immigration wave has seen large numbers of people from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, come to New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries. Caribbeans are concentrated in the Bronx, from 211th Street to 241st Street and Gun Hill Road. There are also Caribbean communities in Brooklyn, especially in the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Prospect Heights.
Gabby Rivera is an American writer and storyteller. She is the author of the 2016 young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath, and wrote the 2017–2018 Marvel comic book America, about superhero America Chavez. Her work often addresses issues of identity and representation for people of color and the queer community, within American popular culture. Rivera is Puerto Rican and from the Bronx.
Perla de Leon, is an American artist and photographer from New York City. Her most famous work is her "South Bronx Spirit" photo series, documenting the urban decay of the South Bronx due to its total economic collapse during the 1970s.
Oxiris Barbot is an American pediatrician who served as the Commissioner of Health of the City of New York from 2018 to 2020. She was then appointed to public health positions with Columbia University and the JPB Foundation, and in 2022 became president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit United Hospital Fund.
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