Playwright Diaz wins ATC’s 2008 Latino Award – Latino Perspectives Magazine – January 2009 – Phoenix, Arizona: “Arizona Theatre Company has selected a Puerto Rican playwright with a “hip-hop flair” as the winner of its 2008 National Latino Playwriting Award. Kristoffer Diaz’s winning entry was The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a work with a [...]

Growing up in Puerto Rico, I have fond memories of the holidays. Christmas, was just the beginning and we would receive one gift. The real holiday came on January 6, El Dia de los Reyes (Three Kings Day).  I remember the day before and going in the fields with the other children in the neighborhood [...]

An inspiring story that shows that you are never too old to make a difference. Rueben Martinez is known for his many callings: Barber. Longtime bookstore owner. MacArthur award winner. Speaker at high schools, colleges and universities across the country. Holder of more honorary degrees than he can count. And now Martinez, 68, is a [...]

Sad to hear about Eartha Kitt dying but she lead a very interesting life. She was most known to audiences as Catwoman in the Batman series from the 1960′s.  Eartha Kitt, a Seductive Talent, Dies at 81 – NYTimes.com

As the year draws to a close, it is a time to remember those who passed. I always look forward to reading the New York Times year end issue “The Lives They Lived” to read about fascinating people that died throughout the year. Often I come across people who I had not heard of and [...]

Latinoteca.com I just came across this very informative and comprehensive website for Latino culture and history in the United States. The site is run by the University of Houston and its publishing firm Arte Public Press. They break down the site into different components, information for teachers and students, authors and artists and for scholars [...]

This Tony Award winning poet will be performing his one man show “County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle” at The Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Lemon won a Tony Award for his participation in Russell Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam . He can also be seen in HBO’s version of the [...]

For most of my life, I have been taught that Tainos were extinct. In the past few years, there has been a movement to disprove this theory. This documentary is a work in progress to look at the facts and the myths surrounding the Taino Indian legacy. The filmmaker, Alex Zacarias has created a website [...]

It’s videos like this that warm the heart. A ten year old fan of the Broadway show “In the Heights” got more than he imagined when he wrote Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and writer of the show asking to meet him backstage. Lin-Manuel orchestrated for the boy to perform the finale of the show in [...]

Wow, I can’t believe that the New York Times had two articles on Puerto Rico one right after the other. More surprising is that it was a featured article on the front page of their web site and it had nothing to do with tourism. This article is about the Taíno influence on the island [...]