Puerto Rican Jam: Rethinking Colonialism and Nationalism

by Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Editor)

Challenges the framing of Puerto Rican cultural politics as a dichotomy between nationalism and colonialism.

Discussions of Puerto Rican cultural politics usually fall into one of two categories, nationalist or colonialist. Puerto Rican Jam moves beyond this narrow dichotomy, elaborating alternatives to dominant postcolonial theories, and includes essays written from the perspectives of groups that are not usually represented, such as gays and lesbians, youth, blacks, and women. Among the topics discussed are the limitations of nationalism as a transformative and democratizing political discourse, the contradictory impact of American colonialism, language politics, and the 1928 U.S. congressional hearings on women's suffrage in Puerto Rico.

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 1997

Reviews

[Ester Styles · Rating 5 out of 5]

super useful for my fucking tfm

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very helpful and compelling anthology, which I read as a document attempting to outline a new generation of theorists' approach to radical Puerto Rican scholarship. Politically, most of the authors have a decidedly anti-authoritarian bent, although strangely there is little mention of the anarchists, who were the predominant force in the Puerto Rican left around the turn of the twentieth century.