Puerto Rico (United States) / All works
Poetry
Río Grande de Loíza
Julia de Burgos · 1938
Synopsis
Written in Naranjito, where the author was a schoolteacher, the poem addresses the great river of her childhood, that of her native country. The landscape of the island joins with the suffering of its inhabitants: the river becomes an immense flood of tears, the greatest of Puerto Rico's weeping, surpassed only by the tears the poet sheds for her enslaved people. Nature, intimacy and political awareness mingle in a single address to the Río Grande de Loíza.
Context
Written in 1935, the poem appeared in 1938 in her collection Poema en veinte surcos, in which the author rises against the exploitation of workers, asserts her Afro-Antillean identity and challenges the norms imposed on women. Her complete poems were published in 2004 by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, and a bilingual edition of her work appeared in 1997 in the United States under the title Song of the Simple Truth. The municipality of Carolina dedicated a park and a mausoleum to her in 1991.
Who it is for
A short lyric poem, in Spanish, found in the 1938 collection or in the bilingual edition.
Prizes and reception
The Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico regards it as the most emblematic poem of the island, perhaps above El Yunque and the pitirre.
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