Magdalena Gómez Papers

Magdalena Gómez, 1953--

Magdalena Gómez is a poet, playwright, actor, director, educator, producer, youth mentor, national keynote speaker and arts based activist. Born in Manhattan, New York City in 1953, and raised in the Hunts Point section of Bronx, she started her career as a performance poet in 1971, while she was still in high school. She became involved in NYC poetry scene by performing her poetry in cafes, bars, churches, theaters, artist lofts and wherever opportunity presented itself within the tri-state area. Her first professional poetry performance was at Dramatis Personae Theater in NYC on West 14th Street, which was known as a gay male performance venue. On Sundays, the theater’s director, turned over the burlesque stage to poetry doyenne, Emilie Glen, known as “the most widely published unknown poet” also provided regular venue for Gómez at the regular poetry salon in her home on the Lower East Side and later on in Greenwich Village. Gómez is considered by many to be part of the early beginnings of the Nuyorican Literary Movement, where she was mentored and encouraged by such poets as Louis Reyes Rivera, Sandra María Esteves, Judith Ortiz-Cofer, José Ángel Figueroa, and Pedro Pietri, but did not stay in the movement. For most of her life, both in New York City and in Springfield, Massachusetts, Gómez has been outside any particular “movement” creating her own unique style and sensibilities.

She is a tireless performer and collaborator. She has worked with Fred Ho, a well-known Asian American musician, composer, writer, and activist who combines music and politics to fight discrimination, oppression and redefine American identity. Their works complement each other since both see their art as a driving force for social change.

Gómez was one of the first Master Teaching Artists with the www.smartschoolsnetwork.org and continues an active educator with them since 1999. From 1995 - 2005, she was a mentor and teaching artist with the Women of Color Leadership Network at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While there, she developed the Writing from the Belly series, where each year the women wrote and performed work that centered on one’s body, body politics and the history of the body. Towards the end of her tenure and inspired by this work, a group of students began to produce, direct and perform, Body Politics, which has since become a yearly and legendary event. Gómez was also the founding theater artist of Teatro El Puente, in Williamsburg, NY as their first volunteer theater director in 1982. Under her direction, Teatro El Puente became a successful HIV/AIDS and health-related educational touring company based at El Puente that still continues today. During the 1970’s she was the drama instructor at Johnny Colon’s East Harlem Music School, where her intergenerational student roster included renowned eco-activist Majora Carter (who is currently on the Teatro V!da advisory board) and singer Marc Anthony. Gómez is currently a commentator with New England Public Radio, and a regular columnist with An African American Point of View newspaper (now, Point of View) in Springfield, MA, where she highlights Latinos who are committed to social change, the arts and justice, as well as addresses issues of importance to the community in her monthly column, Latino Groove. She was formerly a columnist with the first bilingual regional newspaper in Western Massachusetts, La Prensa de Western Massachusetts, founded by Natalia Eugenia Muñoz, the granddaughter of Luis Muñoz Marín, best known as the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico.

Gómez is currently living and working in Springfield, MA and touring nationally as a keynote speaker and teaching artist. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Teatro V!da, the first Latino theater in the history of Springfield, Massachusetts, inaugurated in a ceremony in June, 2007 at the Springfield Museums. Teatro V!da was the recipient of the 2010 Arts/Learning Award for Outstanding Arts Collaborative in the Field of Theater in Massachusetts. This theater ensemble is comprised of multicultural youth, world-class artists, and community adults in diverse fields, creating new, multi-media work tackling issues that affect them such as bullying and discrimination. Gómez’s work is constantly changing and growing so this biographical note is a work in progress and will change through time.