The Journeys of Julia de Burgos
Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4905
Date Written:  2017-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21544

Book review of Vanessa Perez Rosario's Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Poet, writer, mulatto, migrant, nationalist, political activist and feminist, Julia was a subversive voice in the context of the intellectual domain of the island of her time. These qualities are what make her work a beautiful proposal of resistance and liberation.

Indeed, Pérez begins her study of Julia Burgos by retelling and deconstructing the story of her death. She aims to reclaim a life whose appreciation, ironically, has been impoverished by the consecration and the idolization of the poet. For Pérez, Burgos's writing creates a nomadic and migrant subject that seeks escape routes from what she conceived as restrictive notions of identity.

The author identifies and values those routes and strategies found in Julia's poetry and other writings, such as her journalistic articles and personal letters. Among Burgos's texts, Pérez discovers an identity that can be defined as fluid and diasporic, with neither geographical nor conventional ties.