La Bodega Sold Dreams by Miguel Piñero 1st 1980 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Short Eyes

Description: La Bodega Sold Dreams by Miguel Piñero Arte Publico, Houston, 1980. First edition chap book "In 'La bodega sold dreams,' the corner grocery store becomes the fantasmagoric symbol of U.S. capitalism. Television and easy credit are carnival barkers perpetually dangling the American Dream before the eyes of the poor and colonized. They rush to form lines to get in and partake of the dazzling wonders only to be herded into unemployment lines, welfare lines, and the lines of junkies, prostitutes, and street criminals that populate urban marginality. 'La bodega sold dreams' is a cold and bitter vision of the United States by a true bandit-poet, one who has lived on the outskirts of established society and has, from that vantage point, cast a critical eye on its workings ... "--From editor's description, back cover. His first book of poems and the scarce 1st edition from 1980. "Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican born American playwright, actor and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement... Piñero was born on December 19, 1946, in Gurabo, Puerto Rico, to Miguel Angel Gómez Ramos and Adelina Piñero. In 1950, when Miguel was four, he moved with his parents and sister Elizabeth to Loisaida (or Lower East Side) in New York City... His first of many criminal convictions came at the age of eleven, for theft. He was sent to the Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx, and to Otisville State Training School for Boys. He joined a street gang called "The Dragons" when he was 13; when he was 14, he was hustling in the streets. ...He moved to Brooklyn, where he and three other friends committed robberies (according to Piñero, more than 100), until they were caught at a jewelry store. He was sent to Rikers Island in 1964. After this, he joined the Job Corps, and was sent to Camp Kilmer for training. It turned out the opportunity was, as Piñero put it, "Dope City, Skag Town." He returned to New York City and became affiliated with the Young Lords, a group similar to the Black Panthers. He was back in Rikers for drug possession not long after, and spent time at Phoenix House. After his second stint at Rikers, his mother sent him to Manhattan State Hospital, where he would receive his high-school equivalency diploma... In 1972, when Piñero was 25 years old, he was incarcerated in Sing Sing prison for second-degree armed robbery. His first literary work was Black Woman with a Blonde Wig On. Marvin Felix Camillo, the director of The Family, an acting troupe made up of ex-cons, submitted the poem to a contest, which it won. The warden of Sing Sing then became concerned that "contraband" was being taken from the prison and nearly put Camillo in jail after seeing an article in the newspaper. While serving time in prison, Piñero wrote the play Short Eyes as part of the inmates' playwriting workshop. Mel Gussow came to see it, and due to his review in The New York Times, the director of the Theater at Riverside Church wanted Piñero to present it there.When Piñero was released from Sing Sing on parole in 1973, he was able to present Short Eyes with The Family. The title comes from the prison slang term for child molestation. The play is a drama based on his experiences in prison and portrays how a house of detention populated primarily by Black and Latino inmates is affected by the incarceration there of a white pedophile, considered the lowest form of prison life. In 1974, the play was presented at Riverside Church in Manhattan. Theater impresario Joseph Papp saw the play and was so impressed that he moved the production to Broadway. It went from Riverside Church, then to The Public Theater, eventually to Vivian Beaumont Theater. The play was nominated for six Tony Awards. It won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and an Obie Award for the "best play of the year". The play was also a success in Europe. The play catapulted Piñero to literary fame. Short Eyes was published in book form by the editorial house Hill & Wang. It became the first play written by a Puerto Rican playwright to be put on Broadway... In the 1970s, Piñero co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Café with a group of artists including Pedro Pietri and Miguel Algarín, who would become his closest friends. The Café is a place for performance of poetry about the experience of being a Nuyorican or Puerto Rican in New York. In subsequent years, Piñero would land supporting roles in such films as The Jericho Mile (1979), Times Square (1980), Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981), Breathless (1983), Deal of the Century (1983), and Alphabet City (1984)...."

Price: 395 USD

Location: San Francisco, California

End Time: 2024-12-13T01:24:37.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.63 USD