Through this website my partner Andrea Rivera Martinez and I, Pedro Pérez de la Peña from the University of Puerto Rico Recinto Universitario de Mayaguez, joined forces in order to create a page that demonstrates and celebrates the joy poet and visual artist Sandra Maria Esteves has given Puerto Rico, New York and the Dominican Republic. Not only these countries, but all Latin-american countries feel honored to have a wonderful poet become part of one of the most widely known beneficiary artists to modern day times.
Here is Sandra Maria Esteves!
Take a Quick View at the Slideshow below!
Here is Sandra Maria Esteves!
Take a Quick View at the Slideshow below!
Dominican Boricua Nuyorican poet and artist Sandra Maria Esteves was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Known to be a founding member of the Nuyorican poetry movement, she writes poems about social justice and personal feelings towards different aspects in life. Sandra María Esteves was the only woman of this Nuyorican poetry group to pursue a sustained literary career. Born in the South Bronx of a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother she was making a living and maintaining her own family safe. Esteves is a poet, playwright, and graphic artist. She often illustrates her collections of poetry with her own graphic designs and has been known to work with the Taller Boricua. “In an interview with journalist Carmen Dolores Hernández (1997), the author has stated that during the early stages of her writing career she approached writing as a different way of painting, and that the themes that characterize her writing have been a process of self-discovery of her Puerto Rican heritage.”
She was one of the first women to publish a recognized volume of poetry in the United States, she is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including: a Pregones Theater/NEA Master Artist Award, 2010; the Con Tinta Award from the Acentos Poetry Collective, 2007; Poet Honoree from Universes Poetic Theater Ensemble Company, 2006; The Owen Vincent Dodson Memorial Award For Poetry from Blind Beggar Press, 2002; Arts Review Honoree from the Bronx Council on the Arts, 2001; The Edgar Allan Poe Literary Award from the Bronx Historical Society, 1992; and a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1985, among others.
She was one of the first women to publish a recognized volume of poetry in the United States, she is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including: a Pregones Theater/NEA Master Artist Award, 2010; the Con Tinta Award from the Acentos Poetry Collective, 2007; Poet Honoree from Universes Poetic Theater Ensemble Company, 2006; The Owen Vincent Dodson Memorial Award For Poetry from Blind Beggar Press, 2002; Arts Review Honoree from the Bronx Council on the Arts, 2001; The Edgar Allan Poe Literary Award from the Bronx Historical Society, 1992; and a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1985, among others.
Poems by Sandra Maria Esteves
(Click on Links to see)
Real Life Questions & Answers we got to ask the author Sandra Maria Esteves via E-mail!
"In answer to your questions:
1. What inspired you to become a writer?
I was an art student in college when one of my professors caused me to realize that words could be used like tools to create images on the canvass of the mind. That was the big breakthrough that began my journey into creative language exploration.
2. I know that you are Dominican Boricua Nuyorican. Did you as a kid or even as an adult ever experience racial prejudice and did this influence your writing?
Yes and yes. Racial prejudice was always around me although I did not consciously understand it until I was older. It existed within my family when my mother was considered “to dark” to be an acceptable partner for my father. It existed in my building when one of my neighbors gifted me with a pair of light skin-colored nylon stockings and said they would make my legs look lighter. It existed in the boarding school I attended in the fifth grade when my teacher, a nun, said she could tell I was “lazy and shiftless” (a disguised racial cliché) by looking at my hands. (Afterwards I stared at my hands for hours trying to see what she saw.)
It existed and still exists in hundreds of thousands of ways in all the aspects of our lives, some obvious and others not so obvious.
Attached please find a paper I wrote in 1995 that may give you more insight in my ideas about Nuyorican Literature.
Good luck and success with your studies.
Creative abrazos,
Sandra"
"In answer to your questions:
1. What inspired you to become a writer?
I was an art student in college when one of my professors caused me to realize that words could be used like tools to create images on the canvass of the mind. That was the big breakthrough that began my journey into creative language exploration.
2. I know that you are Dominican Boricua Nuyorican. Did you as a kid or even as an adult ever experience racial prejudice and did this influence your writing?
Yes and yes. Racial prejudice was always around me although I did not consciously understand it until I was older. It existed within my family when my mother was considered “to dark” to be an acceptable partner for my father. It existed in my building when one of my neighbors gifted me with a pair of light skin-colored nylon stockings and said they would make my legs look lighter. It existed in the boarding school I attended in the fifth grade when my teacher, a nun, said she could tell I was “lazy and shiftless” (a disguised racial cliché) by looking at my hands. (Afterwards I stared at my hands for hours trying to see what she saw.)
It existed and still exists in hundreds of thousands of ways in all the aspects of our lives, some obvious and others not so obvious.
Attached please find a paper I wrote in 1995 that may give you more insight in my ideas about Nuyorican Literature.
Good luck and success with your studies.
Creative abrazos,
Sandra"