I’m writing from the southern tip of the Bronx, the only borough in New York City on the U.S. mainland, my window overlooking Manhattan, the center of this island archipelago that rules our illusory world. You may have read my essay on the subject of how this city is an echo, or some might say a repetition of the Caribbean island-chain my soul calls home. Somehow my current perch seems more fitting than ever before: on the periphery, gazing at the center. So close I can touch it, but, as usual, I’m not quite of it. If nothing else, this past decade has been a blessing because it has delivered me from any previous illusions that I ever was “of it.”

Pushed to the periphery from whence we came, we renounce the center and announce a new world citizenship: The Global Archipleago. Surrounded by real and metaphorical oceans, standing at the edge of the mainland, which grows ever smaller as the arctic ice caps melt, the citizens of the Global Archipelago unite in a life-saving embrace.

In the following months, I’m hoping that I can illuminate the global latino archipelago of my experience, one that touches on Puerto Rico, Nuyorico, América Latina, Latino America, The Black Atlantic, Downtown, Uptown, even Jersey. Some of my posts will be immediate, journalistic; others detached, intending to rip apart the media filter only to reconstruct it in a way that fits. Not in print, on the screen, for everyone that feels in-between.