Tag Archives: Victor Hernandez Cruz

Victor Hernández Cruz

“It is the job of writers to perceive and explain the truth. To get to the essence of things in this society is a monumental task of awareness.” – V. H. Cruz

Victor Hernández Cruz, born February 6, 1949 in Puerto Rico, grew up and went to school in Spanish Harlem New York. Cruz started writing at fifteen and his first chapbook, Papo Got His Gun! (Calle Once, 1966) was published when he was seventeen. His first collection, Snaps (Random House, 1969), was published three years later at the age of twenty. Cruz is known for blending English and Spanish into his spoken and written poetry (read about the Nuyorican Movement), and for writing about New York as a Puerto Rican. He writes as though he is a perpetual traveler, someone who has visited just long enough to feel at home in New York, California, Puerto Rico, Morocco, and Colorado.

When Urayoán Noel asked in an interview [published in the article “The Music That Is Yourself,” (T&W 38:2, 2007] about the effects of growing up with two languages, Cruz said, “It’s a limbo that I’ve learned to cultivate. I tell you, what’s more important is what I want to say. The question is, can I say it with more strength in English or in Spanish? I feel the subject itself, the content, will call forth the language it needs; the language chooses itself. …In my poetry I am also a student of history and, as I travel, I travel with that in mind. For me, traveling is just as important as investigation or reading texts because it’s seeing cultura viva (living culture)…You can see it in the kinds of food you eat, and in music influenced by this guitar or that melody.”  

In an interview with turnrow (2002), Cruz talked about how he became involved with Teachers & Writers Collaborative. “I met people [in 1968] who were important to me—Herbert Kohl, who I actually met in New York—he is an educator. … I met Ishmael Reed, the African-American novelist, who encouraged me and wrote about my early work. In California I was able to see New York from a distance, from a bird’s eye view. I usually write about places after I've left them.” In the interview with Urayoán Noel, Cruz elaborated on this:

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