Literature
Puerto Rican literature evolved from the art of oral story telling to its present-day status. Written works by the native islanders of Puerto Rico were prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government. Only those who were commissioned by the Spanish Crown to document the chronological history of the island were allowed to write.
It wasn't until the late 19th century with the arrival of the first printing press and the founding of the Royal Academy of Belles Letters that Puerto Rican literature began to flourish. The first writers to express their political views in regard to Spanish colonial rule of the island were journalists. After the United States invaded Puerto Rico during the Spanish–American War and the island was ceded to the Americans as a condition of the Treaty of Paris of 1898, writers and poets began to express their opposition of the new colonial rule by writing about patriotic themes.
With the Puerto Rican diaspora of the 1940s, Puerto Rican literature was greatly influenced by a phenomenon known as the Nuyorican Movement. Puerto Rican literature continued to flourish and many Puerto Ricans have distinguished themselves as authors, poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists and in all the fields of literature. The influence of Puerto Rican literature has transcended the boundaries of the island to the United States and the rest of the world.
Reference
Wikipedia. (2020, July 4). Puerto Rican Literature retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_literature
About Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea, The capital and most populous city is San Juan.
Originally populated by the indigenous Taíno people, Puerto Rico was colonized by Spain following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493. It was contested by various other European powers, but remained a Spanish possession for the next four centuries. The island's cultural and demographic landscapes were shaped by the displacement and assimilation of the native population, the forced migration of African slaves, and settlement primarily from the Canary Islands and Andalusia. In the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico played a secondary but strategic role compared to wealthier colonies like Peru and New Spain. By the late 19th century, a distinct Puerto Rican identity began to emerge, based on a unique creole Hispanic culture and language that combined indigenous, African, and European elements. In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, the United States acquired Puerto Rico, which remains an unincorporated territorial possession, making it the world's oldest colony.
Puerto Ricans have been citizens of the United States since 1917, and can move freely between the island and the mainland.
The 21st century has seen several major challenges, including a government-debt crisis and devastation by Hurricane Maria.
Reference
Wikipedia. (2020, July 4). Puerto Rico retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico
Books
El Deli Latino by ISBN: 9780820328409Publication Date: 2006-09-01This is a Spanish-language edition of The Latin Deli, Judith Ortiz Cofer's prizewinning collection of short stories, personal essays, and poems. A work rich in longing, love, and remembrance, El deli latino opens a door into the lives of the Puerto Rican immigrants who live in or near an urban New Jersey tenement known as "El Building." The book was selected by Rita Dove, Ashley Montague, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. to receive the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which recognizes work that has made "important contributions to our understanding of racism or our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures." In the poem from which the book takes its title, a "woman of no-age" presides over a small store whose wares--Bustelo coffee, jamón y queso, "green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings"--must satisfy, however imperfectly, those who hunger for their island home. In the story "Nada," an anguished mother whose son has been killed in Vietnam refuses the consolation of her neighbors and the medals offered by the government ("Tell the Mr. President of the United States what I say: No, gracias."). Cofer's essay "The Paterson Public Library" recalls how, in books, she found refuge and solace from the outside world. El deli latino transcends the particulars of the expatriate experience to speak universal truths about the mysteries of desire, the quest for knowledge, and the struggle to reconcile opposing selves.
San Juan Noir by ISBN: 9781617752964Publication Date: 2016-10-04Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, this time in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Noir Series has made a strong mark in the Caribbean with Havana Noir (2008), Kingston Noir (2012), Haiti Noir (2011) and Trinidad Noir (2008). This volume showcases the fact that the island of Puerto Rico is not all sandy beaches and extravagant hotels. Mayra Santos-Febres is one of the island's literary titans, and she has recruited a stellar list of compatriots to contribute.
Becoming Julia de Burgos by ISBN: 9780252080609Publication Date: 2014-10-28While it is rare for a poet to become a cultural icon, Julia de Burgos has evoked feelings of bonding and identification in Puerto Ricans and Latinos in the United States for over half a century. In the first book-length study written in English, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario examines poet and political activist Julia de Burgos's development as a writer, her experience of migration, and her legacy in New York City, the poet's home after 1940. Pérez-Rosario situates Julia de Burgos as part of a transitional generation that helps to bridge the historical divide between Puerto Rican nationalist writers of the 1930s and the Nuyorican writers of the 1970s. Becoming Julia de Burgos departs from the prevailing emphasis on the poet and intellectual as a nationalist writer to focus on her contributions to New York Latino/a literary and visual culture. It moves beyond the standard tragedy-centered narratives of de Burgos's life to place her within a nuanced historical understanding of Puerto Rico's peoples and culture to consider more carefully the complex history of the island and the diaspora. Pérez-Rosario unravels the cultural and political dynamics at work when contemporary Latina/o writers and artists in New York revise, reinvent, and riff off of Julia de Burgos as they imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities.
Beneath the Spanish by ISBN: 9781566894890Publication Date: 2017-10-10Beneath the Spanish tracks the way that languages intersect and inform each other, and how language and music shapes experience. Moving across landscapes from Puerto Rico to Manhattan to Morocco, these poems are one man's history and a song that begs to be performed. From "Ay Bendito, Que Vaina": Cuneiform tablet inside, The maracas pencil orality of remembered places, the night stars, the hammock, yucayeques like beehives, a river crab came to my feet to talk with its mouth legs, trembling like castanets. Victor Hernández Cruzis the author of several collections of poetry including, most recently,The Mountain in the SeaandIn the Shadow of Al-Andalus. Featured in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series, Cruz's collection,Maraca, was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.
Malady and Genius by ISBN: 9781438461571Publication Date: 2016-07-01Analyzes the theme of self-sacrifice in Puerto Rican literature through psychoanalytic theory.Malady and Genius examines the recurring theme of self-sacrifice in Puerto Rican literature during the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Interpreting these scenes through the works of Frantz Fanon, Kelly Oliver, and Julia Kristeva, Benigno Trigo focuses on the context of colonialism and explains the meaning of this recurring theme as a mode of survival under a colonial condition that has lasted more than five hundred years in the oldest colony in the world. Trigo engages a number of works in Latino and Puerto Rican studies that have of late reconsidered the value of a psychoanalytic approach to texts and cultural material, and also different methodologies including post-colonial theory, cultural studies, and queer studies.
La Escritura de Mujeres en Puerto Rico a Finales Del Siglo Xx y Principios Del Siglo Xxi by ISBN: 9780773411357Publication Date: 2012-01-25The aim of the critical anthology La escritura de mujeres en Puerto Rico a fianles del Siglo XX y principios del XX!: Narradoras, cuentistas, cronistas, relatoras/Essays on Contemporaray Puerto Rican Writers is to discuss and expose the writings of Puerto Rican women writers within the context of the 20th century and 21st century literature of Puerto Rico and Latin America. The methodology applied by scholars to each author's writing/s is eclectic. Each scholar has utilized different theoretical approaches within the frame of distinct women literary voices. The anthology counts with a variety of writing and literary styles that set apart from traditional literary writings. Essays, chronics, short stories, novels, and other narrative genres are represented. Each author has also explored in their writings different topics that range from social problems, history, women place in society, negritud (Black African culture), autobiography, and costume sketches, among other themes.
