Julia de Burgos

Puerto Rican poet

• Born: February 17, 1914
• Birthplace: Carolina, Puerto Rico
• Died: July 6, 1953
• Place of death: Harlem, New York

One of the most important figures in Caribbean literature, Burgos overcame poverty and discrimination as a Puerto Rican woman of African descent to win critical acclaim as a poet and writer. Burgos’s work often explores such issues as anti-imperialism, feminism, African heritage, and social justice.

Early Life

Julia Constanza Burgos García (HOO-lee-uh) was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, on February 17, 1914, to Francisco Burgos Hans and Paula García de Burgos. The eldest of thirteen children, six of whom died of malnutrition, Burgos confronted poverty throughout her life.

Burgos started school at the age of five in Carolina. Neighbors contributed money so that Burgos could pursue her education. In high school, which she completed in three years at the Escuela Superior de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Burgos’s favorite subjects were math and science, but she already was receiving recognition for her literary talent.

Burgos attended the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, graduating in 1933 with a general diploma in education. She worked as a teacher in rural Cedro Arriba, Naranjito, where she enjoyed the natural beauty of the countryside that would appear in much of her poetry. In 1934, Burgos married the Puerto Rican journalist Rubén Rodríguez Beauchamp. The couple divorced in 1937.

Life’s Work

In the 1930’s, Burgos participated in nationalist demonstrations and also gave public speeches defending Puerto Rican culture. The poems Burgos wrote during this time also reflect her engagement with Puerto Rican nationalism. Poemas exactas a mí misma (Poems Exactly Like Me), Burgos’s first collection of poetry, was completed in 1937 but was never formally published. Her 1938 collection, Poemas en viente surcos (Poems in Five Furrows), reflects Burgos’s concern with the issues of nationalism, feminism, and racial discrimination. The 1939 Canción de la verdad sencilla (Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems, 1997) evokes the themes of eroticism and love from a female perspective and won first prize for poetry from the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature. Published posthumously in 1954, the collection El mar y tú: Otros poemas (The Sea and You: Other Poems) contains Burgos’s later poems, which are characterized by a preoccupation with such themes as interpersonal relationships, love, and death.

In 1940, Burgos moved to New York City and became actively involved in the Puerto Rican community there. Later that year, Burgos went to Cuba, where she enrolled in the Universidad de La Habana and came into contact with other politically engaged Latin American writers, including Pablo Neruda. In Cuba, Burgos joined the Dominican Dr. Juan Isidro Jiménez Grullón, whom she hoped to marry; rejected by his family because of her African heritage, she returned to New York in 1942.

Burgos became a reporter for the New York weekly publication Pueblos Hispanos. In 1943, she married Armando Marín and moved with him to Washington, D.C. She returned to New York in 1945 and, for the next several years, was hospitalized for a variety of illnesses, including alcoholism. On July 6, 1953, Burgos was found unconscious on a street in East Harlem. She died as an unknown in Harlem Hospital and was buried in Potter’s Field in New York. Burgos was identified a month after her death, at which time her family arranged for the return of her body to her birthplace in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

Significance

Literary criticism has emphasized the literary and political value of Burgos’s poetry, recognizing its engagement with issues of sexism and racism as well as workers’ rights and Puerto Rican nationalism. Burgos is seen as a precursor to such Puerto Rican women writers as Rosario Ferré and, by the 1970’s, had become an important Puerto Rican cultural icon: musical versions of her poetry have been produced since the 1970’s; in 1984, the San Juan Ballet presented Ramón Molina’s “A Julia de Burgos” (To Julia de Burgos). Her name graces parks, streets, schools, and many other public spaces in Puerto Rico.

Bibliography

Adams, Clementina R. Common Threads: Themes in Afro-Hispanic Women’s Literature. Miami, Fla.: Ediciones Universal, 1998. This study contains an introduction that discusses the themes of nature and humanism in writings by Afro-Hispanic women and an essay about Burgos, including biographical information, literary analysis of her poetry, examples of her poetry, and a bibliography.

Burgos, Julia de. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems. Compiled and translated by Jack Agüeros. Willimantic, Conn.: Curbstone Press, 1997. This anthology of the poetry of Burgos contains English translations of a comprehensive selection of her poems and includes fifty poems published in newspapers and magazines but not included in collections published by the author.

Gelpí, Juan G. “The Nomadic Subject in the Poetry of Julia de Burgos.” In The Cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean, edited by Conrad James and John Perivolaris. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. This analysis of the poetry of Burgos focuses on its multiple political preoccupations, including feminism and the valorization of African heritage and racial mixture.

Torres-Padilla, José L., and Carmen Haydée Rivera. “Introduction: The Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora and Its Critical Practice.” In Writing Off the Hyphen: New Critical Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, edited by José L. Torres-Padilla and Carmen Haydée Rivera. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. This chapter provides historical background on Puerto Rican migration to the United States and the development of literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora.