Recognition & Reviews
SymRutgers Magazine, "The Honor of a Lifetime, Alumna Nancy Mercado receives the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement." Winter 2018
The Before Columbus Foundation, "2017 American Book Awards announced!" August 4, 2017 San Francisco Chronicle, "Gyasi wins book award for diversity," AP, August 6, 2017 Washington Times, "Debut novelist among winners of the American Book Awards," AP, August 4, 2017 Symphony Space- The Beat of the Poets 2017 WPIX News, "Debut novelist among winners of the American Book Awards," AP, August 4, 2017 New York Times, "Cure the Canon of Literary Agoraphobia," Ishmael Reed, August 2015 The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2015 Literatura y Cuidad: San Juan / New York: Estetica Post-Nuyorican, Ada Fuentes Rivera, 2014 Literatura y Cuidad: San Juan / New York: Recursos Audiovisuales, Ada Fuentes Rivera, 2014 American Clave, "Naked Voice, Magnetic Echo," Piri Thomas, 2013 A History of American Literature, Second Edition Richard Gray, 2012 After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11 Richard Gray, 2011 Mills College blog, "Poets of Color: Location location location," Jenny, 2010 Transcultural Graffiti: Diasportic Writing and the Teaching of Literary Studies, Russell West-Pavlov, 2005 The Nation, "Book Reviewing African-American Style," Wanda Coleman, 2002 A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, "Book Review: The Balance of Understanding," Paul Skiff, 2002 The World Haiku Review, "Dialogue with a Poet Michael Mcclintock," Susumu Takiguchi, 2002 G A R E MARITIME, "It's Never too Late: A Brief Introduction to the Poetry of Nancy Mercado," Dan Shot, 2000 
Photo by Marlis Momber
from L to R center row: Piri Thomas, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Miguel Algarín, Nancy Mercado, Donald Lev Second row: Taylor Meade, Bob Holman, Mikhail Horowitz and in front: Pedro Pietri The Village Gate, New York City |
Presentation of the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement
Praise for Nancy's Work"Beautiful poetry flows. An artist, a poet born of the body and soul, of the people, of children of all colors. She knows what pain is and raises above it. A teacher of teachers, Nancy Mercado has learned that words can be bullets or butterflies, that one has to say what one means and mean what one says."
—Piri Thomas, author of Down These Mean Streets “Nancy Mercado is a NuyoCosmoRican who refused to let poetry off the hook in her memory journey through the oral tradition of secret public self soul searching down to earth extraterrestrial original mad sane expressions heard on the street of a mind that went through college and survived to write about it in poems that keep changing all the time, proving that the future is the only begotten bilingual shadow of the past. Read her book if you don’t believe it!” —Rev. Pedro Pietri, author of Puerto Rican Obituary If the personal is political, then such verses as “He was forgotten/ before he could be remembered/ by the heads of state/ he provided sugar for” written about her grandfather, “Don Portolo…Director of the Sugar Cane Field Workers” and “Milla can speak of/ The turn of the century land reforms, / Of the blinded enthusiasm/ For a man called Marin…” about her grandmother, “Milla,” and “Juanita…Providing food from soil, / Creating homes from ashes, / Teaching tolerance by living” about her aunt in Puerto Rico, offer testimony to the power of this type of poetic vision. --Marilyn Kiss, PhD., for the Encyclopedia of Hispanic-American Literature "In her concluding essay to the collection ¿What's in a Nombre? Nancy Mercado states, ‘Naming is the spiritual act of living beyond the moment, of signifying something beyond the instant ….' [The] author reclaims the right to name herself and her work apart from the prevailing hegemony of gender and/or culture." --Judith Mercado, Blog InterviewsRutgers launched the career of this Puerto Rican poet. Now she's fighting for the Earth's future: BTN LiveBIG, 2017
Alumna Wins American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement: Rutgers Today, 2017 Mujeres at the Mic: The Nuyorican Experience 2016 De Noche en New York, Emisora Sol Latina (Radio Show), 2015 Casa de las Americas, Habana Cuba, 2014 PBS NewsHour, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle, 2009 |