AmeRican

In Tato Laviera’s third collection, poems celebrate the array of stripes and colors making up the American people. In the beginning section, “Ethnic Tributes,” Laviera crafts poems with titles like, “arab,” “black,” “chinese,” “greek,” “jamaican,” “spanish,” and “mundo-world.” In “boricua,” he fashions a timely plea for an end to prejudice, saying that for Puerto Ricans “. . . color is generally color-blind/with us, that’s our contribution, all/ the colors are tied/to our one.”

The latter tw...