Every Child Is Born a Poet: the Puerto Rican Narrative within American Children’s Culture

Piri Thomas, the self-proclaimed Nuyorican “poet laureate of El Barrio,” once said that “every child is born a poet and every poet is the child” (qtd. in McGill 174). In the context of children’s studies, Thomas’ line resounds with a reverence for childhood similar to Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Golden Age children’s authors such as J.M. Barrie or Lewis Carroll. However, Thomas’ statement, “every child is born a poet” hails, not from the Lake District, but from the “mean streets” of New York City’s tenements and slums which, for many children, and for some of the Puerto Rican authors/artists presented in this study, is the inspiration for another kind of wonderland. For the greater Puerto Rican community, including Stateside and Island, children’s literature and culture has served as a cultural and national bridge, uniting both Island and stateside communities; it also functioned as an entrance into United States national discourse and an outlet for resistance against U.S. colonialism. Island and U.S. writers and artists, such as Pura Belpré, Nicholasa Mohr, Sonia Manzano, and Judith Ortiz-Cofer, have used children literature and culture as a repository for historical memory, as a foundation for a cultural and literary legacy, as a plea for U.S. identity, and as a way of positing new Englishes. Children’s literature also seems like the only literature where Island and U.S. writers have been placed within the same tradition. Examining the Puerto Rican “narrative” within U.S. children’s culture helps scholars reconsider the child’s role, agency, and influence within society and showcases the value of children’s culture as an intellectual and creative space for constructing collective ideas of nationhood, language, and culture by both mainstream and marginalized groups. My study identifies three childhood paradigms which are helpful for studying minority and/or postcolonial groups (the displaced child, the Diaspora child, and the between child). In addition, my study furthers the importance of children’s culture when studying national and ethnic literatures.

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