Tato Laviera (1950–2013)

Tato Laviera was born Jesús Abraham Laviera on May 9, 1950, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He moved to the Lower East Side as a child. He attended Brooklyn College and Cornell University. Before becoming a full-time poet in the 1970s, he was a community organizer. His first collection, La Carreta Made toon meer a U-Turn, was published in 1979. He was one of the best-known representatives of the Nuyorican school of poetry. During his lifetime, he published books, plays and poems including AmeRícan, Mixturao and Other Poems, and The King of Cans. After being in a coma since late January, he died from complications of diabetes on November 1, 2013 at the age of 63. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder