Dolores Prida

Prida in her office at Nuestro magazine in 1977.

Dolores Prida (September 5, 1943 – January 20, 2013) was a Cuban-American columnist and playwright. Catherine E. Shoichet of CNN said that she was a "Latina Dear Abby".

She wrote for a weekly column of the El Diario La Prensa. She also contributed to Latina magazine and the New York Daily News. At Latina she wrote her "Dolores Dice" ("Dolores says" in Spanish) column. Prida was a founding member of the Latina magazine.

History

Prida was born on September 5, 1943, in Caibarién, Cuba. She was the oldest of three children. She had two sisters, Lourdes and Maria. While she was a teenager, Prida wrote poetry and short stories. Shortly after the completion of the Cuban Revolution, her father left for the United States, fleeing in a boat. In 1961, two years after the departure of their father, Prida and her mother and two siblings left Cuba. The family settled in New York City. Prida lived in New York City for the rest of her life. She attended Hunter College, taking night classes while working at a bakery. She later entered the publishing industry and became a journalist.

In the 1970s and 1980s she became the senior editor of Nuestro magazine, the managing editor of El Tiempo, Visión magazine's New York correspondent, the director of information services of the National Puerto Rican Forum, the literary manager of the International Arts Relations (INTAR), and the publications director of the Association of Hispanic Arts (AHA).

Prida published her first play in 1977. For her playwrighting she won the Cintas Fellowship Award for Literature in 1976, the Creative Artistic Public Service Award for Playwriting in 1976, and the Excellence in Arts Award in 1987. The Manhattan Borough President presented her with the third award. Mount Holyoke College granted her an honorary degree, a Doctor of Humane Letters, in 1989. Her best known one act plays is "Coser y Cantar", a monologue about two characters named Ella and She.

In 1998 Prida took control of Latina's advice column. She had no prior training in writing advice.

She died on the morning of January 20, 2013, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Her cause of death is not yet known, and her family placed a request for an autopsy.

Works

Plays

• Beautiful Señoritas (1977)
• Beautiful Señoritas (1977), is a one act play that was made to critique traditional gender roles and the cultural expectations placed on Latina women. The play explores themes such as sexism, and cultural stereotypes all while examining how these dynamics intersect with Latina identity.
• Beggars Soap Opera (1979)
• Coser y cantar (1981)
• Coser y Cantar (1981) is a play by that explores the inner conflict faced by Latina woman, shown with two characters Ella and She. These two personas often clash at multiple times as they confront cultural expectations, and their personal identity. This play often plays on the fact of the mixture of the farce and realism.
• Pantallas (1986)
• Pantallas (1986) is a satirical play about Elena a telenovela actor, and Roberto another actor, who face their disillusionment about soap operas. The play centers around a love triangle and criticizing of their profession. The characters often critique the formulaic nature of telenovelas and the emptiness that can come with success.
• Botánica (1991)
• Botánica (1991) is a play set in a Puerto Rican botanica in New York City’s . The story revolves around the widowed owner of the botanica, and her daughter Anamu, and Anamu’s daughter Milagros, who has just graduated from college. The play explores themes of family dynamics, tradition, spirituality and materialism.
• Savings (1985)
• Savings (1985) is a comedic musical set in a neighborhood savings bank, where a group of customers and employees talk about their lives. Through the music the play explores the general themes of gentrification, cultural identity, and characters going through their evolving neighborhood. Having a clash between the themes of keeping tradition and progress.
• Casa Propia (1999, means "A House of Her Own")
• Four Guys Named José (2000)
• Una Mujer Named Maria (2000, "una mujer" means "a woman")

Poetry

• 37 poemas (1967)

Reception

In The New York Times, D. J. R. Buckner said that in Casa Propia, "[n]ot much more is needed for comedy than throwing these broadly drawn strong characters together" and that in regards to the characters, "Fanny, Olga, Manolo and Junior are likely to live with you for a long time." He said that Prida "has a good ear for New York Hispanic street language, and this cast exploits it so hilariously that at times even a viewer with no Spanish may want to set aside the simultaneous translation earphones and take it in raw: the grimaces and gestures reveal what is meant, and the sound is too good to miss."

External links

• Quotations related to Dolores Prida at Wikiquote