Abstract
A Nuyorican Looks Back is an artistic project that draws upon my experiences as a young Latina immigrant in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s and addresses the issues of memory, identity, ethnicity, gender, culture, community, and family. The piece, composed of original images, text, and performance, is presented via a multimedia project and was inspired by the work of author and photographer Wright Morris. Morris – most notably in The Inhabitants (1946) and The Home Place (1948) – introduced the idea of the photo-text; a hybrid artform of images and words that creates a fictionalized account of his personal memory and demonstrates how individuals can discover meaning in their lives through the creation and reception of art. With this project, I hope to inspire others to use artistic expression to reflect upon the challenges and successes of discovering both their own cultural uniqueness and our universal human desires.