Download or read book Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico written by Lillian Guerra and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Well-written and powerfully argued. . . . I know of no other work [on the subject] as comprehensive in its scope, extensive in its analysis, coherent in its internal argument, and consistent in its evaluated sources."--Franklin W. Knight, Johns Hopkins University In this bold social history, Lillian Guerra explores the nature of popular-class and elite political consciousness in Puerto Rico from 1898 to 1940, the period when North American colonialism was taking shape. Through the prisms of gender, race, and class she analyzes the folk sayings of subalterns in tandem with the literary production of the intelligentsia, producing a mosaic of debate, dissent, and affirmation regarding Puerto Rican identity. The book focuses on two sources of intellectual and creative expression--a vast and largely unstudied collection of folk tales, songs, and riddles (the 1914 Mason collection) and the essayist movement (including writers such as Antonia Pedreira, Miguel Melendez Munoz, and Luis Munoz Marin), which appropriated the figure of the Puerto Rican peasant as a symbol of national identity. From these sources Guerra mines a spectrum of opinions and beliefs about the world of the popular classes and she demonstrates that their songs, word-play, and narrative expression formed the nexus for engagement with the elite. What results is an image of the Puerto Rican peasant that works both against and in collusion with elite society. Guerra's conclusions about class struggle for identity under North American imperialism challenge readers to compare the historical case of Puerto Rico with other colonial cases, not just in the Caribbean but throughout the Americas. Lillian Guerra is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Scholarship for 1995-96 and the Dorothy Danforth Compton Fellowship of the Institute for the Study of World Politics in 1997.

Download or read book Divided Borders written by Juan Flores and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity is a collection of essays on history, literature and culture by the celebrated commentator on Puerto Rican and Caribbean culture in the United States, Juan Flores. He is the recipient of the prestigious Casa de las Americas award for his monograph on Puerto Rican identity. Included are: ñPuerto Rican Literature in the United States: Stages and Perspectives,î ñThe Insular Vision: Pedreira and the Puerto Rican Misere,î ñNational Culture and Migration: Perspectives of the Puerto Rican Working Class,î ñLiving Borders / Buscando America: Languages of Latino Self Formationî and many others.

Download or read book The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move written by Jorge Duany and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puerto Ricans maintain a vibrant identity that bridges two very different places--the island of Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. Whether they live on the island, in the States, or divide time between the two, most imagine Puerto Rico as a separate nation and view themselves primarily as Puerto Rican. At the same time, Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, and Puerto Rico has been a U.S. commonwealth since 1952. Jorge Duany uses previously untapped primary sources to bring new insights to questions of Puerto Rican identity, nationalism, and migration. Drawing a distinction between political and cultural nationalism, Duany argues that the Puerto Rican "nation" must be understood as a new kind of translocal entity with deep cultural continuities. He documents a strong sharing of culture between island and mainland, with diasporic communities tightly linked to island life by a steady circular migration. Duany explores the Puerto Rican sense of nationhood by looking at cultural representations produced by Puerto Ricans and considering how others--American anthropologists, photographers, and museum curators, for example--have represented the nation. His sources of information include ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, interviews, surveys, censuses, newspaper articles, personal documents, and literary texts.

Download or read book An American Icon in Puerto Rico written by Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2022-02-11 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on multigenerational Puerto Rican women and girls, Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez masterfully illustrates how Barbie dolls impact femininity, body image, and cultural identity. Since her debut in 1959, Barbie has transcended boundaries and transformed into a global symbol of femininity, capturing the imaginations of girls all around the world. An American Icon in Puerto Rico offers a captivating study of that iconic influence by focusing on a group of multigenerational Puerto Rican women and girls. Through personal narratives and insights, author Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez unveils the emotional attachment that these women and girls have formed with the doll during their formative years. This connection serves as a powerful lens to explore the intricate relationships girls have with their Barbie dolls and the complex role Barbie plays in shaping their identities. Aguiló-Pérez boldly confronts the challenges and contradictions that arise, offering a compelling analysis of how playing with Barbie dolls can impact a girl's perception of femininity, body image, race, and even national identity. Through these nuanced explorations, she unearths the potential pitfalls of these influences, encouraging readers to reflect on their own relationships with the iconic doll. By weaving together personal anecdotes, historical context, and sociocultural analysis, Aguiló-Pérez masterfully illustrates how these women and girls navigate the diverse landscapes of femininity, body image, and cultural identity, with Barbie serving as both a facilitator and a reflection of their growth. In doing so, she redefines the significance of Barbie in the lives of Puerto Rican women and girls, prompting readers from all around the world to reevaluate their perceptions of femininity and embrace a more inclusive understanding of beauty, body image, and self-expression.

Download or read book The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico written by Amílcar Antonio Barreto and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A [book] rich in detail and analysis, which anyone wanting to understand the language debate in Puerto Rico will find essential."--Arlene Davila, Syracuse University This is the first book in English to analyze the controversial language policies passed by the Puerto Rican government in the 1990s. It is also the first to explore the connections between language and cultural identity and politics on the Caribbean island. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, both English and Spanish became official languages of the territory. In 1991, the Puerto Rican government abolished bilingualism, claiming that "Spanish only" was necessary to protect the culture from North American influences. A few years later bilingualism was restored and English was promoted in public schools, with supporters asserting that the dual languages symbolized the island’s commitment to live in harmony with the United States. While the islanders’ sense of ethnic pride was growing, economic dependency enticed them to maintain close ties to the United States. This book shows that officials in both San Juan and Washington, along with English-first groups, used the language laws as weapons in the battle over U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the volatile debate over statehood. It will be of interest to linguists, political scientists, students of contemporary cultural politics, and political activists in discussions of nationalism in multilingual communities.

Download or read book Contested Images written by Alma M. García and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contested Images: Women of Color in Popular Culture is a collection of 17 essays that analyze representations in popular culture of African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American women. The anthology is divided into four parts: film images, beauty images, music, and television. The articles share two intellectual traditions: the authors, predominantly women of color, use an intersectionality perspective in their analysis of popular culture and the representation of women of color, and they identify popular culture as a site of conflict and contestation. Instructors will find this collection to be a convenient textbook for women's studies; media studies; race, class, and gender courses; ethnic studies; and more.

Download or read book Witchcraft and Welfare written by Raquel Romberg and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-05-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persecuted as evil during colonial times, considered charlatans during the nation-building era, Puerto Rican brujos (witch-healers) today have become spiritual entrepreneurs who advise their clients not only in consultation with the spirits but also in compliance with state laws and new economic opportunities. Combining trance, dance, magic, and healing practices with expertise in the workings of the modern welfare state, they help lawyers win custody suits, sick employees resolve labor disability claims, single mothers apply for government housing, or corporation managers maximize their commercial skills. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among practicing brujos, this book presents a masterful history and ethnography of Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing). Raquel Romberg explores how brujería emerged from a blending of popular Catholicism, Afro-Latin religions, French Spiritism, and folk Protestantism and also looks at how it has adapted to changes in state policies and responded to global flows of ideas and commodities. She demonstrates that, far from being an exotic or marginal practice in the modern world, brujería has become an invisible yet active partner of consumerism and welfare capitalism.

Download or read book Colonialist Photography written by Eleanor M. Hight and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonialist Photography is an absorbing collection of essays and photographs exploring the relationship between photography and European and American colonialism. The book is packed with well over a hundred captivating images, ranging from the first experiments with photography as a documentary medium up to the decolonization of many regions after World War II. Reinforcing a broad range of Western assumptions and prejudices, Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson argue that such images often assisted in the construction of a colonial culture.

Download or read book Puerto Ricans in the Empire written by Teresita A. Levy and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most studies of Puerto Rico’s relations with the United States have focused on the sugar industry, recounting a tale of victimization and imperial abuse driven by the interests of U.S. sugar companies. But inPuerto Ricans in the Empire, Teresita A. Levy looks at a different agricultural sector, tobacco growing, and tells a story in which Puerto Ricans challenged U.S. officials and fought successfully for legislation that benefited the island. Levy describes how small-scale, politically involved, independent landowners grew most of the tobacco in Puerto Rico. She shows how, to gain access to political power, tobacco farmers joined local agricultural leagues and the leading farmers’ association, the Asociación de Agricultores Puertorriqueños (AAP). Through their affiliation with the AAP, they successfully lobbied U.S. administrators in San Juan and Washington, participated in government-sponsored agricultural programs, solicited agricultural credit from governmental sources, and sought scientific education in a variety of public programs, all to boost their share of the tobacco-leaf market in the United States. By their own efforts, Levy argues, Puerto Ricans demanded and won inclusion in the empire, in terms that were defined not only by the colonial power, but also by the colonized. The relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States was undoubtedly colonial in nature, but, as Puerto Ricans in the Empire shows, it was not unilateral. It was a dynamic, elastic, and ever-changing interaction, where Puerto Ricans actively participated in the economic and political processes of a negotiated empire.

Download or read book African Caribbeans written by Alan West-Duran and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-03-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African Diaspora left an indelible imprint on Caribbean countries and islands. This reference, the only broad historical and cultural survey of the black experience in the Caribbean, celebrates the Afro-Caribbean diversity of the countries it profiles. Each of the 15 chapters introduces a country, island, or group of islands, providing an overview from the arrival of slaves to the current situation. Topics include, history, economy, politics, social stratification, race relations, cultural highlights, religion, and notable figures. Readers will discover the broad range of languages, political systems, racial makeup, historical uniqueness, and cultural offerings that shape the Caribbean. A chronology, glossary, and photos enhance the text.

Download or read book Mambo Montage written by Agustín Laó-Montes and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-13 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York is the capital of mambo and a global factory of latinidad. This book covers the topic in all its multifaceted aspects, from Jim Crow baseball in the first half of the twentieth century to hip hop and ethno-racial politics, from Latinas and labor unions to advertising and Latino culture, from Cuban cuisine to the language of signs in New York City. Together the articles map out the main conceptions of Latino identity as well as the historical process of Latinization of New York. Mambo Montage is both a way of imagining latinidad and an angle of vision on the city.

Download or read book Health and Medicine in the circum Caribbean 1800 1968 written by Juanita De Barros and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health and medicine in colonial environments is one of the newest areas in the history of medicine, but one in which the Caribbean is conspicuously absent. Yet the complex and fascinating history of the Caribbean, borne of the ways European colonialism combined with slavery, indentureship, migrant labour and plantation agriculture, led to the emergence of new social and cultural forms which are especially evident the area of health and medicine. The history of medical care in the Caribbean is also a history of the transfer of cultural practices from Africa and Asia, the process of creolization in the African and Asian diasporas, the perseverance of indigenous and popular medicine, and the emergence of distinct forms of western medical professionalism, science, and practice. This collection, which covers the French, Hispanic, Dutch, and British Caribbean, explores the cultural and social domains of medical experience and considers the dynamics and tensions of power. The chapters emphasize contestations over forms of medicalization and the controls of public health and address the politics of professionalization, not simply as an expression of colonial power but also of the power of a local elite against colonial or neo-colonial control. They pay particular attention to the significance of race and gender, focusing on such topics as conflicts over medical professionalization, control of women’s bodies and childbirth, and competition between ‘European’ and ‘Indigenous’ healers and healing practices. Employing a broad range of subjects and methodological approaches, this collection constitutes the first edited volume on the history of health and medicine in the circum-Caribbean region and is therefore required reading for anyone interested in the history of colonial and post-colonial medicine.

Download or read book Tuning Out Blackness written by Yeidy M. Rivero and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuning Out Blackness fills a glaring omission in U.S. and Latin American television studies by looking at the history of Puerto Rican television. In exploring the political and cultural dynamics that have shaped racial representations in Puerto Rico’s commercial media from the late 1940s to the 1990s, Yeidy M. Rivero advances critical discussions about race, ethnicity, and the media. She shows that televisual representations of race have belied the racial egalitarianism that allegedly pervades Puerto Rico’s national culture. White performers in blackface have often portrayed “blackness” in local television productions, while black actors have been largely excluded. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, archival research, and textual analysis, Rivero considers representations of race in Puerto Rico, taking into account how they are intertwined with the island’s status as a U.S. commonwealth, its national culture, its relationship with Cuba before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the massive influx of Cuban migrants after 1960. She focuses on locally produced radio and television shows, particular television events, and characters that became popular media icons—from the performer Ramón Rivero’s use of blackface and “black” voice in the 1940s and 1950s, to the battle between black actors and television industry officials over racism in the 1970s, to the creation, in the 1990s, of the first Puerto Rican situation comedy featuring a black family. As the twentieth century drew to a close, multinational corporations had purchased all Puerto Rican stations and threatened to wipe out locally produced programs. Tuning Out Blackness brings to the forefront the marginalization of nonwhite citizens in Puerto Rico’s media culture and raises important questions about the significance of local sites of television production.

Download or read book Latino Peoples in the New America written by José A. Cobas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Latinos" are the largest group among Americans of color. At 59 million, they constitute nearly a fifth of the US population. Their number has alarmed many in government, other mainstream institutions, and the nativist right who fear the white-majority US they have known is disappearing. During the 2016 US election and after, Donald Trump has played on these fears, embracing xenophobic messages vilifying many Latin American immigrants as rapists, drug smugglers, or "gang bangers." Many share such nativist desires to build enhanced border walls and create immigration restrictions to keep Latinos of various backgrounds out. Many whites’ racist framing has also cast native-born Latinos, their language, and culture in an unfavorable light. Trump and his followers’ attacks provide a peek at the complex phenomenon of the racialization of US Latinos. This volume explores an array of racialization’s manifestations, including white mob violence, profiling by law enforcement, political disenfranchisement, whitewashed reinterpretations of Latino history and culture, and depictions of "good Latinos" as racially subservient. But subservience has never marked the Latino community, and this book includes pointed discussions of Latino resistance to racism. Additionally, the book’s scope goes beyond the United States, revealing how Latinos are racialized in yet other societies.

Download or read book Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore written by Rafael Ocasio and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico, 1915 explores the founding father of American anthropology's historic trip to Puerto Rico in 1915. As a component of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Boas intended to perform field research in the areas of anthropology and ethnography there while other scientists explored the island's natural resources. Native Puerto Rican cultural practices were also heavily explored through documentation of the island's oral folklore. A young anthropologist working under Boas, John Alden Mason, rescued hundreds of oral folklore samples, ranging from popular songs, poetry, conundrums, sayings, and, most particularly, folktales. Through extensive excursions, Mason came in touch with the rural practices of Puerto Rican peasants, the J baros, who served as both his cultural informants and writers of the folklore samples. These stories, many of which are still part of the island's literary traditions, reflect a strong Puerto Rican identity coalescing in the face of the U.S. political intervention on the island. A fascinating slice of Puerto Rican history and culture sure to delight any reader

Download or read book Our Landless Patria written by Rosa E. Carrasquillo and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In particular, marginal citizenship adopted patriarchy as a model to regulate social relations at home, failing to address gender inequalities and perpetuating class differences."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Agrarian Puerto Rico written by César J. Ayala and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges dominant interpretations of colonialism's impact on the economy and social structuring of a US-owned Caribbean colony.