The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States

by Jorge Duany

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.

Genres: History, History and Politics

448 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2002

Reviews

[Lyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good work, helped me think more about the impact of diapsora on national groups. Good resource for undergrad paper!

[Andrés SM · Rating 5 out of 5]

A key reading to understand the Puerto Rican diaspora and the (still) limiting discourses of Puerto Rican culture relating to migration and race.

sendo palo.

[Mr. Monahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthropologist Jorge Duany synthesizes the Puerto Rican transnational identity in this socio-historical study of the twentieth century Puerto Rican experience. He forges his way through an ambitious body of historiography and primary source material to craft a definitive and reconstructed picture of the translocal lives of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Duany defines the Puerto Rican nation as "a translocal community based on collective consciousness of a shared history, language, and culture." However, Puerto Rican identity is also, equally tied to the legacy of colonial influence stemming from the United States policy. Paradoxically, this is Duany's Puerto Rico: "postcolonial" yet still very colonial.