Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, to a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother. His father, a photographer whose pictures have been featured in Espada's volumes of poetry, aspired to play professional baseball. His disappointment over not having realized that goal (a difficult one for a dark-skinned Puerto Rican in the late 1940s) influenced the young Espada, and he later wrote about the experiences of his father in the poem "Tato Hates the New York Yankees." Espada's first book of poetry, The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, published in 1984, reflects the experiences of Spanish- speaking migrants. A tenant lawyer in Boston, Espada continues to write socially and politically informed poetry.