2024 Collaborative Residency: Brown Arts Institute x Nuyorican Poets Cafe

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, Brown Arts Institute collaborated with Caridad De La Luz, a world renowned spoken word artist known as La Bruja, during a year-long residency, exploring practices of spoken word, bomba y plena, and salsa.

Caridad De La Luz is a multifaceted performer known as LA BRUJA who won an Emmy in 2022 as Script Writer of “Legacy of Puerto Rican Poetry” that aired on ABC in 2021. As of January 2022, she became the Executive Director of the NUYORICAN POETS CAFE where she began her career in 1996. In 2023, she helped secure a renovation project of $24 million for the Nuyorican Poets Cafe located on the Lower East Side of NYC, this renovation phase is being called Nuyorican-struction and will renew all five floors of the historic building and is projected to be completed by 2026.  Winner of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2019-2020 and a 2021 David Prize finalist, Caridad has balanced a career of activism, education and art with performances in successful Off-Broadway musicals such as I LIKE IT LIKE THAT and as a recording artist with hip hop albums FOR WITCH IT STANDS and BRUJALICIOUS. Winner of the Puerto Rican Women Legacy Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award from The Bronx Historical Society, honored as A Bronx Living Legend by The Bronx Music Heritage Center, was presented with a Citation of Merit from The Bronx Borough President and was named “Top 20 Puerto Rican Women Everyone Should Know”. NY Times called her a “Juggernaut" after the first off-Broadway run of her original musical BOOGIE RICAN BLVD. where she played 7 different characters and has currently printed the Libretto to celebrate its 15th anniversary. Her acting career has spanned from stage to film, appearing in numerous movies such as BAMBOOZLED, DOWN TO THE BONE, EL VACILON and GUN HILL ROAD. Her latest one-woman show called FROM POOR TO RICO, which includes original music and visuals from her family archive of Puerto Rico in the 1970s, received the Bronx Cultural Visions Fund from Bronx Council on the Arts to be presented in 2025.