{"id":437,"date":"2015-10-29T19:08:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T19:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=437"},"modified":"2015-10-30T22:22:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T22:22:00","slug":"looking-further-into-felipe-lucianos-jibaro-my-pretty-nigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=437","title":{"rendered":"looking further into Felipe Luciano’s “J\u00edbaro, My Pretty Nigger”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“There’s a move to divide us. It’s being done by Afro-saxons and coconuts. People who would have us believe that there’s a separate gulf between two nations: Black and Latino. This is not the poem, y’all. I’m telling you there’s no difference between Buford, South Carolina and Ponce, Puerto Rico…Mambo is Black, merengue is Black, R&B is Black, joropo is Black, flamenco is Black,\u00a0guaguanco is Black, bomba is Black, be careful. They will come to you and say be careful with those hoards of Spanish people. Fuck them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Felipe Luciano opens his appearance on Def Jam in this way. Audience members cheer as though the poem has already begun before he tells them that he’s just going off. In “To Make a Poet Black,” Wilkinson concludes\u00a0that Luciano’s place in the Black Arts Movement “should serve less to conceal cultural nuances, but work more to convey a cultural milieu in which poetry by African Americans and Puerto Ricans shared a communal residence” (330). Whether or not\u00a0this statement applies to his self-image and artistic mission is obviously impossible to glean without consulting him, but judging by this performance, he seems to be acting first and apologizing later –making a radical point by saying that Black and Latino cultures ought not to be divided or even nuanced, but are one and the same.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0speak only intermediate-level Spanish, but for those who don’t at all, I’ve translated his first four lines:<\/p>\n

“J\u00edbaro, mi negro lindo
\nDe los bosques de ca\u00f1a
\nCaciques de luz
\nTiempo es una cosa c\u00f3mica.”<\/p>\n

J\u00edbaro, my pretty negro
\nFrom the cane forests
\nChiefs of light
\nTime is a funny thing<\/p>\n

Read about\u00a0the modern connotations of “j\u00edbaro” here<\/a><\/p>\n