Ed Vega
Encyclopedia
Edgardo Vega Yunqué was a Puerto Rican
novelist and short-story writer who also used the Americanized pen name
Ed Vega.
to Alberto Vega, a Baptist minister, and Abigail Yunqué, and lived in Cidra, Puerto Rico
until his family moved to the South Bronx
in 1949. Even as a child, he loved to read, and became familiar with many of the great European works. His seminal influences included Cervantes, Azorín, Borges, Unamuno, Lope de Vega, Victor Hugo, and members of the Generation of '27
literary movement.
Upon graduating from high school in 1954, he joined the United States Air Force
.
During his leave time Vega focused on reading and analysis of American literature, after finding a large collection of books at his sister's house.
After his Air Force service Vega attended Santa Monica College
, and eventually got his degree from New York University
. He dropped out of school temporarily after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
, and worked in East Harlem as part of the war on poverty
.
Vega was married to Pat Vega née Patricia Jean Schumacher on December 31, 1961; their marriage ended in divorce in 1997. They had three children: Alyson, Matthew, and the artist Tim Vega
. Vega was also the stepfather of Suzanne Vega
.
Vega's literary influences were subtle and complex. In addition to William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, he was heavily influenced by Holocaust literature and by the concern of the Irish members of his childhood neighborhood, for the independence and reunion of their native country.
Vega's published fiction includes the novels The Comeback, Blood Fugues, The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle, and No Matter How Much You Promise to Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again. His short story collections include Mendoza's Dreams and Casualty Report, which were adapted for the stage and anthologized internationally.
The New York Times Book Review called it "a powerhouse of a novel...it brings vividly to life, with its polyphony of voices, the simmering ethnic stew of the great American city." The Washington Post found it "a sprawling, iconoclastic, ambitious, stunningly written novel that is part picaresque, part bildungsroman, and part recapitulation of America's last half century." The Village Voice declared that Vega had "appropriated English, making it imitate Spanish, jazz and street noise. He creates a fantasy community out of the materials of exile." Newsday
found it "juicy, sprawling... Yunqué succeeds brilliantly." The New York Post
called it "a profound novel in the tradition of Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner." The novel also won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
and the Washington Post Book of the Year Award.
Vega's reputation grew with The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle.
According to Booklist
, Vega's "ribald and rambling style reverberates throughout his third novel...he deftly skewers the politics of academia, the tyranny of mediocrity in contemporary American literature, and America's ongoing prejudice against Puerto Ricans. Vega, unlike many formulaic novels he disparages, definitely has a lot to say."
Publishers Weekly
announced that "Vega Yunqué has a keen intelligence, an ear for dialogue and a flair for zany passages of magic realism."
His subsequent novel Blood Fugues solidified Vega Yunqué's international reputation as a literary novelist.
Publishers Weekly
wrote that "Yunqué writes with grace, vividly evoking New York City and American life." Booklist
announced "the author is a bravura storyteller with an extraordinary ability to create fascinating, emotion-engaging characters...the novel's subplots involving political terrorism and immigrant resistance to imposed assimilation are absolutely relevant to today's America."
Vega's short story collections also met with critical acclaim.
The San Francisco Chronicle
announced that in Mendoza's Dreams Vega "show us, in twelve funny and personality-laden tales, that there is indeed much more to life in Spanish Hartlem than gang warfare; set to the strains of Bernstein and Sondheim." The Village Voice Literary Supplement found Casualty Report to be "brilliantly traced...a multivocal journey through layers of miscegenated consciousness, intensely bound to a nation that often works like a dream."
, and served as the first Executive Director of the El Barrio Local Development Corporation (EBLDC).
He taught creative writing at the Latin American Writers Institute, the Teachers & Writers Collaborative
, the New School for Social Research, as well as at Hostos Community College
, Hunter College
, and SUNY Old Westbury.
He also served as Director of the Clemente Soto Vélez
Cultural and Educational Center, and as a counselor to ASPIRA
and the Addiction Service Agency.
at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York City
.
At the time of his death, Vega had completed the novel How That Dirty Rotten Charlie Maisonet Turned Me into a Puerto Rican Sex Freak and was finishing the story collection A Place of Remembrance on an Island Called Regret and the nonfiction book Spic, Writing Under the Threat of Censorship in the United States: A Jeremiad.
Amongst the many memorials and remembrances in his name, the New York Times obituary hailed Vega's honesty and his "picaresque, combustive and sometimes flamboyantly comic expressions of the Puerto Rican experience in New York’s multicultural maelstrom." Another remembrance in the New York Times stated that "his novels captured the crazy glory of this city and its people, with jazzy riffs and elegant solos that flowed with rhythm. His words could dazzle, amuse and even infuriate."
Puerto Rican people
A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...
novelist and short-story writer who also used the Americanized pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Ed Vega.
Early years
Edgardo Vega Yunqué was born in PoncePonce, Puerto Rico
Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...
to Alberto Vega, a Baptist minister, and Abigail Yunqué, and lived in Cidra, Puerto Rico
Cidra, Puerto Rico
Cidra is a municipality of Puerto Rico located in the central region of the island, north of Cayey; south of Comerío and Aguas Buenas; east of Aibonito and Barranquitas; and west of Caguas. Cidra is spread over 12 wards and Cidra Pueblo...
until his family moved to the South Bronx
South Bronx
The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. The neighborhoods of Tremont, University Heights, Highbridge, Morrisania, Soundview, Hunts Point, and Castle Hill are sometimes considered part of the South Bronx....
in 1949. Even as a child, he loved to read, and became familiar with many of the great European works. His seminal influences included Cervantes, Azorín, Borges, Unamuno, Lope de Vega, Victor Hugo, and members of the Generation of '27
Generation of '27
The Generation of '27 was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. Their first formal meeting took place in Seville in 1927 to mark the 300th...
literary movement.
Upon graduating from high school in 1954, he joined the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
.
During his leave time Vega focused on reading and analysis of American literature, after finding a large collection of books at his sister's house.
After his Air Force service Vega attended Santa Monica College
Santa Monica College
Santa Monica College is a two-year, public, junior college located in Santa Monica, California.Santa Monica College was first opened in 1929 as Santa Monica Junior College. Current enrollment is over 30,000 students in more than 90 fields of study...
, and eventually got his degree from New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. He dropped out of school temporarily after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, and worked in East Harlem as part of the war on poverty
War on Poverty
The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent...
.
Vega was married to Pat Vega née Patricia Jean Schumacher on December 31, 1961; their marriage ended in divorce in 1997. They had three children: Alyson, Matthew, and the artist Tim Vega
Tim Vega
Tim Vega was an American graphic designer best known for his work with several musical acts, especially jam bands. Among his patrons were Blues Traveler, Gov't Mule, and Spin Doctors.- Background :Vega, a New York City native , started out in the graffiti art scene...
. Vega was also the stepfather of Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
.
Work
Vega focused on writing since 1972 and published his first short story "Wild Horses" in Nuestra Magazine in 1977. He wrote 14 novels and 3 story collections. He said that he often worked on several books at once and had no problem keeping track of them:Since my work is about people and my affection for them, I don’t lose track of who they are just like I don’t lose track of my children or other relatives and acquaintances. I have friends – and characters – whom I don’t see for a long time, but as soon as we get together we pick up where we left off.
Vega's literary influences were subtle and complex. In addition to William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, he was heavily influenced by Holocaust literature and by the concern of the Irish members of his childhood neighborhood, for the independence and reunion of their native country.
Vega's published fiction includes the novels The Comeback, Blood Fugues, The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle, and No Matter How Much You Promise to Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again. His short story collections include Mendoza's Dreams and Casualty Report, which were adapted for the stage and anthologized internationally.
Critical acclaim
The critical response to No Matter How Much You Promise to Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again was overwhelming.The New York Times Book Review called it "a powerhouse of a novel...it brings vividly to life, with its polyphony of voices, the simmering ethnic stew of the great American city." The Washington Post found it "a sprawling, iconoclastic, ambitious, stunningly written novel that is part picaresque, part bildungsroman, and part recapitulation of America's last half century." The Village Voice declared that Vega had "appropriated English, making it imitate Spanish, jazz and street noise. He creates a fantasy community out of the materials of exile." Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
found it "juicy, sprawling... Yunqué succeeds brilliantly." The New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
called it "a profound novel in the tradition of Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner." The novel also won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
According to its website, PEN Oakland was founded in 1989 by Ishmael Reed, who came up with the idea, and co-founders Floyd Salas, Reginald Lockett and Claire Ortalda, in order to “promote works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and to educate both the public and the...
and the Washington Post Book of the Year Award.
Vega's reputation grew with The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle.
According to Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
, Vega's "ribald and rambling style reverberates throughout his third novel...he deftly skewers the politics of academia, the tyranny of mediocrity in contemporary American literature, and America's ongoing prejudice against Puerto Ricans. Vega, unlike many formulaic novels he disparages, definitely has a lot to say."
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
announced that "Vega Yunqué has a keen intelligence, an ear for dialogue and a flair for zany passages of magic realism."
His subsequent novel Blood Fugues solidified Vega Yunqué's international reputation as a literary novelist.
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
wrote that "Yunqué writes with grace, vividly evoking New York City and American life." Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
announced "the author is a bravura storyteller with an extraordinary ability to create fascinating, emotion-engaging characters...the novel's subplots involving political terrorism and immigrant resistance to imposed assimilation are absolutely relevant to today's America."
Vega's short story collections also met with critical acclaim.
The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
announced that in Mendoza's Dreams Vega "show us, in twelve funny and personality-laden tales, that there is indeed much more to life in Spanish Hartlem than gang warfare; set to the strains of Bernstein and Sondheim." The Village Voice Literary Supplement found Casualty Report to be "brilliantly traced...a multivocal journey through layers of miscegenated consciousness, intensely bound to a nation that often works like a dream."
Activism and advocacy
Vega was the campaign manager for the first political campaign of State Assemblyman Nelson Antonio DenisNelson Antonio Denis
Nelson Antonio Denis is a former New York politician who represented East Harlem in the New York State Assembly.-Early life:Denis was born and raised in New York City...
, and served as the first Executive Director of the El Barrio Local Development Corporation (EBLDC).
He taught creative writing at the Latin American Writers Institute, the Teachers & Writers Collaborative
Teachers & Writers Collaborative
Teachers & Writers Collaborative is a New York City-based organization that sends writers and other artists into schools. It was founded in 1967 by a group of writers and educators including Herbert Kohl, June Jordan, Muriel Rukeyser, Grace Paley, and Anne Sexton, who believed that writers could...
, the New School for Social Research, as well as at Hostos Community College
Hostos Community College
Eugenio María de Hostos Community College of The City University of New York is a community college in the City University of New York system located in the South Bronx, New York City...
, Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, and SUNY Old Westbury.
He also served as Director of the Clemente Soto Vélez
Clemente Soto Vélez
Clemente Soto Vélez was a Puerto Rican nationalist, poet, journalist and activist who mentored many generations of artists in Puerto Rico and New York City...
Cultural and Educational Center, and as a counselor to ASPIRA
ASPIRA
ASPIRA of New York is a Hispanic non-profit organization working to foster educational excellence and civic responsibility among young Latinos. ASPIRA youth development clubs, dropout prevention initiatives and after school programs each year serve more than 8,000 young people in the five boroughs...
and the Addiction Service Agency.
A prolific author
Vega died on August 26, 2008 from a possible thrombosisThrombosis
Thrombosis is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel is injured, the body uses platelets and fibrin to form a blood clot to prevent blood loss...
at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
At the time of his death, Vega had completed the novel How That Dirty Rotten Charlie Maisonet Turned Me into a Puerto Rican Sex Freak and was finishing the story collection A Place of Remembrance on an Island Called Regret and the nonfiction book Spic, Writing Under the Threat of Censorship in the United States: A Jeremiad.
Amongst the many memorials and remembrances in his name, the New York Times obituary hailed Vega's honesty and his "picaresque, combustive and sometimes flamboyantly comic expressions of the Puerto Rican experience in New York’s multicultural maelstrom." Another remembrance in the New York Times stated that "his novels captured the crazy glory of this city and its people, with jazzy riffs and elegant solos that flowed with rhythm. His words could dazzle, amuse and even infuriate."
Selected works
- Wild Horses. Nuestra Magazine, 1977.
- The Comeback. Houston: Arte Público, 1985.
- Mendoza's Dreams. Houston: Arte Público, 1987.
- Casualty Report. Houston: Arte Público, 1991.
- No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cause Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again: A Symphonic Novel. New York: Farrar, 2003. excerpt online
- The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle. Woodstock and New York: Overlook, 2004.
- Blood Fugues. New York: Rayo, HarperCollins, 2005.
- Rebecca Horowitz, Puerto Rican Sex Freak (cancelled by the publisher).
Awards
- PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary AwardPEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary AwardAccording to its website, PEN Oakland was founded in 1989 by Ishmael Reed, who came up with the idea, and co-founders Floyd Salas, Reginald Lockett and Claire Ortalda, in order to “promote works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and to educate both the public and the...
(2004) for No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cause Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again: A Symphonic Novel - Washington Post Book of the Year Award (2004)
See also
- List of Puerto Rican writers
- List of famous Puerto Ricans
- Puerto Rican literature
Further reading
- Binder,Wolfgang. "Interview: Ed Vega." American Contradictions: Interviews with Nine American Writers. Eds. Wolfgang Binder and Helmbrecht Breining. Hanover and London: Wesleyan UP, UP of New England, 1995, 125-142.
- "A Hispanic Voice of Satire: Ed Vega’s Portrait of the Puerto Rican Community." Voix et Langages aux Etats-Unis. Tome I. Ed. Serge Ricard. Aix-en-Provence: Univ. de Provence, 1993, 229-243.
- Hernández, Carmen Dolores. "Ed Vega." Puerto Rican Voices in English: Interviews with Writers. Wesport: Praeger, 1997, 196-225.
- Pérez, Richard. "Literary Pre/occupations: An Interview with Puerto Rican Author Edgardo Vega Yunqué." Centro Journal 18.1 (2006): 188-205.
- Edgardo Vega Yunqué (1936-) By: David de Posada, IN: West-Durán, Herrera-Sobek, and Salgado, Latino and Latina Writers, I: Introductory Essays, Chicano and Chicana Authors; II: Cuban and Cuban American Authors, Dominican and Other Authors, Puerto Rican Authors. New York, NY: Scribner's; 2004. pp. 1019–1030.