Julia de Burgos, 1914-1953
Julia de Burgos, 1914-1953
Julia de Burgos García was a Puerto Rican poet and as an advocate of Puerto Rican independence, served as Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was also a civil rights activist for women and African/Afro-Caribbean writers. By the early 1930s, de Burgos was already a published writer in journals and newspapers and received awards and recognition. She published three books which contained a collection of her poems and her third book was published posthumously in 1954. De Burgos’ lyrical poems are a combination of the intimate, the land and the social struggle of the oppressed. Many critics assert that her poetry anticipated the work of feminist writers and poets as well as that of other Hispanic authors. In one of her poems, she writes: “I am life, strength, woman.” After disappearing from the home of relatives in Brooklyn in June 1953, she was discovered a month later where she collapsed on a sidewalk in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan. Later she died of pneumonia at 39 and was given a pauper’s burial since no one claimed her body and she had no identification on her. Friends and family would eventually trace her, find her grave and claim her body to be returned to Puerto Rico where she was given a hero’s burial.
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Julia de Burgos, 1914-1953
Julia de Burgos García was a Puerto Rican poet and as an advocate of Puerto Rican independence, served as Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was also a civil rights activist for women and African/Afro-Caribbean writers. By the early 1930s, de Burgos was already a published writer in journals and newspapers and received awards and recognition. She published three books which contained a collection of her poems and her third book was published posthumously in 1954. De Burgos’ lyrical poems are a combination of the intimate, the land and the social struggle of the oppressed. Many critics assert that her poetry anticipated the work of feminist writers and poets as well as that of other Hispanic authors. In one of her poems, she writes: “I am life, strength, woman.” After disappearing from the home of relatives in Brooklyn in June 1953, she was discovered a month later where she collapsed on a sidewalk in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan. Later she died of pneumonia at 39 and was given a pauper’s burial since no one claimed her body and she had no identification on her. Friends and family would eventually trace her, find her grave and claim her body to be returned to Puerto Rico where she was given a hero’s burial.