Via Wikimedia Commons
Miguel Piñero
1946–1988
Nuyorican playwright and poet, author of 'Short Eyes,' co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café
Miguel Piñero (1946-1988) was a Puerto Rican playwright, poet, and actor who was a founding figure of the Nuyorican literary movement. Born in Gurabo, Puerto Rico, he grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in poverty. His play "Short Eyes" (1974), written while incarcerated at Sing Sing, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and an Obie Award.
Piñero co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Cafe with Miguel Algarín in 1973, which became the most important venue for Puerto Rican and Latino literary culture in the United States. His poetry, collected in "La Bodega Sold Dreams" (1980), captured the experience of Puerto Rican diaspora life with raw honesty — poverty, addiction, incarceration, and the search for identity between two cultures.
His poem "A Lower East Side Poem" requested that his ashes be scattered across the Lower East Side: "scatter my ashes thru the Lower East Side... so let me sing my song tonight / let me feel out this night / let me linger here some more / let me stay here some more... 'cause I'm an outlaw in the eyes of America."