Born in the barrio El Guanabano in the town of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, in 1949 to Severo and Rosa Cruz, Victor Hernandez Cruz and his family moved to Spanish Harlem in New York City in 1954. This part of the city teemed with immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and Cruz was surrounded with new sights, smells, and sounds, some familiar and some strange. Learning English along with a new culture was both a challenge and a reward for the young Cruz, who made the intersections between his new home and his old the material for much of his writing. Although he dropped out of high school during his senior year, Cruz became a voracious reader and writer as a teenager, self-publishing his first book when he was only seventeen years old.

The 1960s were exciting times for emerging writers. Small presses sprung up everywhere and...