"Nigger-Reecan Blues!"

Willie Perdomo is a Nuyorican poet and childrens book author who seemed to express his feelings about his Afro-Latino race through his work. Perdomo decided to take things onto the next level when he composed a poem called "Nigger-Reecan Blues". This poem really made me understand how people view Afro-Latinos especially being that it was of personal experience.

Perdomo starts the poem off by saying:
"Hey, Willie. What are you,man?
I am.
Boricua? Moreno? Que?
No, silly. You know what i mean: What are you?
I am you. You are me. We the same. Can't you see our veins drinking the same blood?"

As you can see this unidentfied voice happens to be challenging the ethnicity of Willie as a Puerto-Rican. But, Willie happened to turn an uncomfortable situation into one that isnt of ignorance. Perdomo replying with the "I am you. You .... the same blood?" goes to show how he wanted the person to realize that throughtout all the labeling and ignorance of society, Afro-Latinos are just the same as anyone else. It shouldnt have to be the color of skin to determine where your actually from but it should be way beyond that.

Many people are actually thankful for a poem like this because they faced something like this in life and the fact that this issue is starting to become noticed because of this poem is refreshing. Just the name alone shows that this is something that cant really be seen as happy especially with the word "blues".

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7An4hEmRHTk Here is the actual video for visual insight.