Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780393313833)

Where a Nickel Costs a Dime captures the hip-hop rhythms and in-your-face intensity of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a downtown Manhattan club where the hottest young poets are finding their fame.

Willie Perdomo's poems, in the tradition of Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Ntozake Shange, meet at the intersection of the street and the academy.

The world in these piercing and heartbreaking poems is Spanish Harlem, "where night turns to day without sleep," where "Puerto Rico stays on our minds when the fresh breeze of cafe con leche y pan con mantequilla comes through half-opened windows and under our doors," where "babies fall asleep to the bark of a German shepherd," where "Independence Day is celebrated everyday," where "the police come into your house without knocking. They throw us off rooftops and say we slipped. They shoot my father and say he was crazy. They put a bullet in my head and say they found me that way."

Blending images of street life, drugs, and AIDS against hope and determination, Willie Perdomo is a cutting-edge bard who speaks to the soul of his generation.


Author: Willie Perdomo
ISBN-10: 0393313832
ISBN-13: 9780393313833
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 03/01/1996
Pages: 80
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 5.90h x 8.80w x 0.40d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/22/1996 pg. 69
Library Journal 06/15/1996 pg. 69