- Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City
Arlene Dávila brilliantly considers the cultural politics of urban space in this lively exploration of Puerto Rican and Latino experience in New York, the global center of culture and consumption, where Latinos are now the biggest minority group. Analyzing the simultaneous gentrification and Latinization of what is known as El Barrio or Spanish Harlem, Barrio Dreams makes a compelling case that--despite neoliberalism's race-and ethnicity-free tenets--dreams of economic empowerment are never devoid of distinct racial and ethnic considerations.
- The Near Northwest Side Story: Migration, Displacement, and Puerto Rican Families
In The Near Northwest Side Story, Gina M. Pérez offers an intimate and unvarnished portrait of Puerto Rican life in Chicago and San Sebastian, Puerto Rico--two places connected by a long history of circulating people, ideas, goods, and information. Pérez's masterful blend of history and ethnography explores the multiple and gendered reasons for migration, why people maintain transnational connections with distant communities, and how poor and working-class Puerto Ricans work to build meaningful communities.
- Boricuas In Gotham: Puerto Ricans In The Making Of New York City
This new and very important collection of essays reinterprets and updates the history of New York's Puerto Rican community and its leaders from the beginnings of the great migration in the 1940s to the present time. The collection also honors the memory of the late Dr. Antonia Pantoja, who was perhaps the community's most important and influential activist and institution builder during this period. The book is organized in chronological order and includes chapters by noted historians, sociologists, and political scientists, such as Virginia S nchez Korrol, Ana Celia Zentella, Jos‚ Cruz, Francisco Rivera Batiz, and Gabriel Haslip-Viera.
Books on
When I Was Puerto Rican
Many individuals who grew up in the barrios, whether of Puerto Rico, Brooklyn, or elsewhere, may have found life to be one long, continuous struggle for survival. In Santiago's memoir, she lovingly recalls her own passage through childhood, when her mother moved her children away from their father and the humble dwelling they all shared in the country outside San Juan to a Brooklyn apartment adjoining the projects. For Santiago, who at age 14 was an exceptional student but still spoke little English, the ticket out of the cycle of poverty was acceptance to New York City's High School of Performing Arts. At once heart-wrenching and remarkably inspirational, this lyrical account depicts rural life in Puerto Rico amid the hardships and tensions of everyday life and Santiago's awakening as a young woman, who, although startled by culture shock, valiantly confronted New York head-on. When in the epilogue Santiago refers to her studies at Harvard, it is both a stirring and poignant reminder of the capacities of the human spirit. Alice Joyce From Booklist
Also available in Spanish: Cuando era puertorriqueña
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In this brief, scholarly book, freelance journalist Rivera acknowledges Puerto Ricans for their contributions to hip-hop music over the past 30 years. It's debatable just how much credit is deserved, considering Rivera comes up with only a handful of recognizable players who predate the culture-wide "Latino boom" of the past few years-Fat Joe, Angie Martinez and the late Big Punisher, the biggest-selling Latino rapper of all time. But she still crafts a persuasive revisionist history through painstaking research and original reporting. |
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Rich with the textures and rhythms of street life, The Tenants of East Harlem is an absorbing and unconventional biography of a neighborhood told through the life stories of seven residents whose experiences there span nearly a century. Modeled on the ethnic distinctions that divide the community, the book portrays the old guard of East Harlem: Pete, one of the last Italian holdouts; José, a Puerto Rican; and Lucille, an African American. |
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Nueva York: The Complete Guide to Latino Life in the Five Boroughs New York is a Latino cultural hotbed. With nearly well over 2 million people of Hispanic descent in New York City area, more and more of the city's food, shopping, nightlife, and cultural activity revolves around the Latino communities. |
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