The Nuyorican poetry movement emerged in the 1960s in New York City. In the 1950s and 1960s, a swell of Puerto Rican immigrants arrived in New York City’s East Harlem as a result of Puerto Rico becoming a commonwealth of the United States. This explosion of immigrants in one centralized area mirrored the emergence of African American art during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, and just like then, the Nuyorican community became a powerful artistic movement made up of musicians, poets, and artists.

Most of the artists who belonged to the movement were either immigrants or first-generation Americans who were united by their shared heritage, struggles with poverty, and experiences of discrimination in New York City, particularly in public schools. For example, in American schools at this time, speaking Spanish was discouraged if not outright banned, and students were forced to assimilate in traumatic ways.

Perhaps the defining feature of the Nuyorican movement is its use of Spanglish. The Spanglish spoken by Nuyorican poets combined influences from Puerto Rican Spanish, American English, and aspects of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish, as well as some influences from African American Vernacular English (AAVE). These language influences, alongside other artistic movements of the time like modernism and the avant-garde of the 1960s, led to a stylistic fusion unique among Nuyorican artists.