Notes

Her life began in a barrio, but as the first of thirteen children she was given the chance to go to school At a young age she learned to love literature. She is beautiful, precocious, sensitive, and has a facility for languages. By age 19 she has already completed a university degree, and soon thereafter she joins the “daughters of freedom”, then the Puerto Rican nationalist party. She becomes a teacher, then a writer. In 1938 she publishes her first collection of poems, which she promotes herself by traveling across the island giving readings and trying to sell the slim volume. A second collection follows only a year later. The third appears posthumously in 1954.She earned a teaching certificate at the University of Puerto Rico, and worked as a teacher at the Barrio Cedro Arriba in Naranjito before moving to New York, where she worked as a journalist, and then Cuba, where she pursued further studies at the University of Havana. Returning to New York after two years in Cuba, de Burgos served as the art and culture editor for the progressive newspaper Pueblos Hispanos A teacher and writer, de Burgos made important declarations through her poetry.