Aurora Levins
Morales was born in Indiera, Puerto Rico, on February 24, 1954, to a
Puerto Rican mother and a Jewish father. She came to the United
States with her family in 1967, and lived in Chicago and New
Hampshire. She presently works in the San Francisco Bay Area, where
she has resided since 1976. Her short stories have appeared in
This Bridge Called My Back, Cuentos: Stories by Latinas, and in
Revista Chicano-Riqueña. In 1986 she published Getting
Home Alive, a collection of short stories, essays, prose poems,
and poetry in English authored in collaboration with her mother,
Rosario Morales.
Levins Morales does not belong to the group of writers who were
brought up in New York City and whose works deal with life in El
Barrio. Her experiences have taken her, instead, from the urban
world of Chicago, to the rural quiet of New Hampshire, and to the
pluralistic and politically radical culture of the San Francisco Bay
Area. Her writing has been profoundly influenced by two major
literary streams: first, by North American feminists like Adrienne
Rich, Susan Griffin, and in particular by Alice Walker. She has also
read extensively the works of major Latin American writers such as
Pablo Neruda and Eduardo Galeano. Her Puerto Rican–Jewish heritage
has also been an important source of creativity. Her search for a
language that will express a Latina woman’s experience and struggle
identifies her with the body of literature produced by US women of
color, and closely connects her with the work of contemporary
Chicana writers.
She tries to define her mestiza and female identity through
an analysis and critique of her two cultures. While considering
herself “a child of the Americas,” and not just Puerto Rican, Aurora
employs in her writings the cultural symbols of her country, and her
childhood memories of the Puerto Rican countryside. A unique element
of Getting Home Alive is the generational dialogue and
“cross-fertilization,” as she describes it, between her mother’s
voice and her own. Along with Víctor Hernández Cruz, Levíns Morales
illustrates the gradual diversification that is taking place in
United States Puerto Rican literature. Following a first moment of
protest which denounced the social and economic conditions of the
puertorriqueños in the Bronx and El Barrio, younger Puerto Rican
writers are exploring other issues, such as language, multiple
subjectivities, international politics, class, feminism, and
transnational identities. Their denunciations are not expressed
directly but are embedded in a more lyrical and individual poetic
language. Writers like Cruz and Morales exemplify a synthesis
between the North American literary tradition and a broad Latin
American culture. As Puerto Ricans have moved away from New York
City and settled in other urban centers throughout the United States,
their life experiences have varied, and the emerging writings are
thus characterized by a greater diversity of voices.
Frances R. Aparicio
University of Illinois at Chicago
Aurora
Levins Morales is a poet, historian and activist. She writes powerfully
and personally about the current state of the world from the perspective
of a feminist who is both a Puerto Rican and a Jew, and her poetry is
aired regularly on Pacifica Radio program Flashpoints. Her 911 poem "Shema",
which was widely shared on the internet, has been read at rallies and
religious services across the country and aired repeatedly on Pacifica
Radio. She is also a community historian, collecting, preserving and
sharing the stories of disenfranchised peoples, and using their life
histories as a basis for community organizing and development. 
