Daughter de Boriken / Lola Rosario / 2024
In Daughter de Boriken, Rosario bounces between nationalist pride and identity struggles. Hailing from Nueva Yol, she does her mandatory nods to the Nuyorican and low-income living. She rather pointedly rejects the Nuyorican identity for herself in “When I was Nuyorican,” a confusing move. In the following poem “Boricua Soy,” she doubles down, even when facing the criticism of a Boricua elder who insists she’ll never be Boricua. These tensions reflect commonplace struggles in identity development, and elsewhere she celebrates and laments her tongue, takes joy in la isla and the food, as expected of diaspora lit. One surprising feature is the author’s wealth. Apparently, she has the money to travel all over the world before realizing she needed to settle in Boricua in her 50s. The spoken word here is sensuous and playful, but a greater aesthetic or political vision would help ground the writing.