| Sandra María Esteves | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1948 The Bronx, New York |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | American |
| Literary movement | Nuyorican |
| Notable work(s) | Yerba Buena, Tropical Rain, Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo |
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www.sandraesteves.com |
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Sandra María Esteves is an American poet, playwright, and graphic artist. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and is one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement. She has published numerous collections of poetry and has conducted literary programs at organizations including the Caribbean Cultural Center and El Museo del Barrio. She lives in New York City.
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Self-described "Puerto Rican - Dominican - Borinqueña - Quisqueyana - Taíno - African American," Esteves was born in the South Bronx of a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother who had separated, and was raised by her mother Christina Huyghue and a paternal aunt.[1][2][3] She was educated in Catholic boarding schools where she experienced traumatic anti-Hispanic prejudice that led her to abandon the Spanish language and favor English. After she graduated from high school, she attended New York's Pratt Institute and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1978. She has closely been associated with the poets of the Nuyorican Poets Café and was one of the few women involved with this group in the 1970s and 1980s.
Esteves is particularly well known for the poetic conversation she has engaged in with the Puerto Rican poet Luz María Umpierre, which consists of two poems by each woman. In Esteves's best-known poem "A la mujer borrinqueña" [To the Puerto Rican Woman] (published in Yerba Buena in 1980), the poet presented a figure called Maria Christina, a proud mother and wife that participates in her community's struggle against prejudice and oppression. In 1985, Umpierre published a poem titled "In Response" (in Y otras desgracias/And Other Misfortunes) which offered a pointed critique of the vision of Puerto Rican womanhood advanced in Esteves's poem. Specifically, Umpierre criticized Esteves (and her character Maria Christina) for her complacency with traditional social views of womanhood, and presented a poetic speaker that argues that her name is "not Maria Cristina" (spelling Cristina in Spanish, without an h) and who does not depend on men. Esteves responded to Umpierre in her poem "So Your Name Isn't Maria Cristina," part of Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo (1990). Umpierre subsequently commented on that poem in her own "Musée D'Orsay," published in For Christine (1995), and also wrote an essay stating that she holds a sisterly esteem towards Esteves and considers her an important fellow poet.[4] These four poems have been published together in the fifth edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature with an introduction by the Puerto Rican scholar Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes; the same critic also recorded an interview for the Modern Language Association on this topic.[5][6] Umpierre has criticized the reading of these poems offered by the scholar William Luis, stating her strong disagreement with his interpretation.[7][8][9]
Esteves's book Yerba Buena was selected as Best Small Press publication in 1981 by the Library Journal. She received the 1985 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and was an Art Review 2001 Honoree from the Bronx Council on the Arts.