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BOOK
PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION: |
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SHOWS A BROAD RANGE OF EARLY PUERTO RICAN LIFE IN NEW YORK |
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There are the Colon brothers, Jesus y Joaquin. They were leaders and founders of early Puerto Rican community organizations. Another person was Pura Belpre who was the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public Library System and she was a folk tales writer who wrote a lot of books in English about Puerto Rican folk tales and traditions for the American audience and she was quite successful. Unfortunately, not many people know that her contributions to early communities, the colonias, was quite astonishing for that time period. Also, you will see the face of Oscar Garcia Rivera who was the first Puerto Rican elected official to the New York State Assembly. We have the faces of Erasmo y Ismael Ybando. They were actors and community activists and they were really engaged in all that concerned Puerto Rican and other ethnic groups that were working towards doing good and to contribute to the history of the city. We have the face of Jaime Haslip-Peña, a merchant marine, a postal clerk, and among our guests tonight we have Gabriel Haslip-Viera who is our former Director and who generously donated to us some of the materials and duplicates of his father’s papers and later on we would like to invite him to say some words about his father. We also have the papers of Pedro Paquito Marcano who was a composer and musician and many other people who have left their papers and photographs and historical documents as a legacy for the younger generation,. Not only do we want to show the faces of those people who in a very humble way tried to contribute to the betterment of Puerto Ricans but also we do have the faces of a lot of people ... in different simple jobs ... all those simple individuals with their work they really make a difference in what is New York and they have helped make this city one of the most important in the world. |