Nicholasa Mohr

Nicholasa Mohr (born November 1, 1938) is a Nuyorican writer, born in the United States to Puerto Rican parents.

Quotes

Interview

in Puerto Rican Voices in English: Interviews with Writers by Carmen Dolores Hernandez (1997)

• I feel a citizen of the world. I'm not really a Nationalist. I'm very fortunate; I can embrace any culture in the world and feel quite at home. That's a joy for me. New York gave me a sense of belonging that is not constricted by nationalism.

• I tackle that reality, how the children of Puerto Ricans who go back to the island are surprised when they find that what their parents talked about is a myth, that it no longer exists.

• The island of Puerto Rico is a small but complicated place. It's the only place in the world, I think, where you have a Latin American culture and you're an American citizen. I wrote a paper published by the University of Oklahoma's Department of Psychology about Puerto Ricans being like adopted citizens. I describe myself as an adopted citizen, much like a child who has been adopted by a family. He or she doesn't look like that family and longs to know who his or her parents really are. I was taught in the schools that Americans adopted Puerto Rico, it is not a real country. So, am I supposed to be forever grateful because someone adopted us and took us in? The Spaniards first, and then the United States? How does a child, then, form an identity?

• I am always glad to express gratitude to the library, I spent my youth there, reading Nancy Drew mysteries, Jack London novels, and the works of Fenimore Cooper. But I never read about myself or about black people. Eventually, at 14, I discovered Howard Fast and that was quite wonderful.

• I never strongly identified with Puerto Rican writers from Puerto Rico. My writing comes from a different sensibility. However, we do share ethnicity. What some of them write about doesn't necessarily hold that much interest for me. It's also a question of social class. There is a certain classism in all of this. We are different because we write in another language. We are not living in a void. Some of their writing, as I said in my essay Puerto Rican Writers in the United States, Puerto Rican Writers in Puerto Rico: A Separation Beyond Language, is very baroque. I find that hard to relate to. I might have more in common with people writing in places like Prague or Ecuador. I have, however, read and liked very much Julia de Burgos and José Luis González and Magali García Ramis. But things are changing now. Now we have some Puerto Rican writers writing in English, like Rosario Ferré. That seems to indicate change.

Quotes about Nicholasa Mohr

• Nicholasa Mohr has proclaimed, over and over again-in her writings, in her words-her great love for New York, the city in which she was born and raised. She is a "Latino" New Yorker whose great warmth and openness, whose wide, welcoming smile embody the best of Puerto Rican social culture in that city.
  • Carmen Dolores Hernandez Puerto Rican Voices in English: Interviews with Writers (1997)