Jesus Abraham "Tato" Laviera was a Latino poet and playwright in the United States.
17 Facts About Tato Laviera
2.
Tato Laviera was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960 with his mother and siblings at the age of nine.
3.
Tato Laviera attended Catholic school in the United States where is teachers urged him to change his name to Abraham because they felt that Jesus was unfit for someone of Latino descent who did not understand English.
4.
Tato Laviera served as the director of University of the Streets, a nonprofit organization focused on providing educational opportunities for underprivileged individuals.
5.
Tato Laviera initially began writing as a means of reestablishing the name that was taken from him earlier in his life.
6.
Tato Laviera had a daughter, Ruth Ella, and a son, Che Malik, who died in 2005.
7.
Tato Laviera suffered from diabetes, which caused a complications and interruptions in his work.
8.
Tato Laviera then revisited his passion for community work, working with the American Association for Diabetes, where his main initiative was promoting awareness representing Latinos who suffered from the disease.
9.
Tato Laviera even founded the Jesus A Laviera One-Day with Diabetes Project which allowed him to incorporate his adoration for poetry.
10.
Tato Laviera hosted events during which poets could speak about how diabetes has affected their lives and offer support to the Hispanic community.
11.
Tato Laviera began writing poems and jingles at a very young age.
12.
Tato Laviera uses the sublets of each language to contribute to his rich symbolism and metaphor that are commonplace in his poetry.
13.
Tato Laviera focuses on the individual lives of those who inhabit the Puerto Rican enclave within New York.
14.
Tato Laviera celebrates the Puerto Rican-American experience, through his soulful and powerful songs.
15.
Amidst a pressure to conform to he standards of the bustling Metropolis culture, Tato Laviera emphasizes the importance of his own culture as a Puerto Rican American.
16.
One of Tato Laviera's distinguishing characteristics is his celebrations of the diverse languages that exist within America.
17.
The Tato Laviera Papers are held at the Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, Hunter College, CUNY.