Nicholasa Mohr’s style

Nicholasa Mohr's focus has been directed towards fiction, drama, screenplays, and teleplays. The autobiographical form is quite predominant in Mohr's writings, as is James Clifford's concept of "ethnobiography," in which the self is seen in conjunction with his/her ethnic community; “and Mohr employs traditional story-telling, simple, direct, accessible, chronological use of time, and a logical structure” (Aparicio). Mohr writes in a traditional folktale style, manifested in the familiarity and the enjoyment of the traditional tales, such as in Old Levitia and the Mountain of Sorrows (1996) (Atkinson, Oswald, 206). She is a gifted storyteller who draws from memories and cultural traditions in capturing different aspects of Puerto Rican life in the United States (Acosta).

Mohr’s writing is mostly about the experiences of Puerto Ricans who have being born or raised in the United States. In her stories she presents the cultural barriers that Puerto Ricans confronted when they started to immigrate to the United States, such as language, traditions, racial discrimination and the identity crisis that emerge from their dual citizenship. She tried to capture through her writing “the despairing realities and wide range of experiences of Puerto Ricans in U.S. society: their joys and sorrows, their dreams and nightmares, their successes and defeats, the injustices and struggles they face, and above all, their will to survive and ability to adapt to a hostile environment” (Acosta). For example, the first novel that she publishes in 1973, Nilda, “describes the Puerto Rican urban experience from the perspective of an adolescent girl and provides a different vision of the Puerto Rican experience not limited to street gangs, drugs, and violence” (Dominguez, Nicholasa Mohr).