Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A scholarly assessment of the ancient human population of Puerto Rico
Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, And Sociopolitical Processes In Ancient Puerto Rico is a scholarly assessment of the ancient human population of Puerto Rico, migration patterns, cultural changes, population trends, and unexplained mysteries of the region's paleodemography. Extensively researched by adjunct assistant professor of anthropology L. Antonio Curet, Caribbean Paleodemography stresses the importance of scientific rigor when analyzing demographic factors and proposes more rigorous and exacting ways of modeling past human behavior and population trends. A critical-minded, succinctly written scholarly account, enthusiastically recommended to students and professionals in the fields of archaeology and paleology.
... Read more

Product Description

Enjoy the tales of Puerto Rico--in Spanish and in English!

In Stories from Puerto Rico/Historias de Puerto Rico, we've placed the Spanish and English stories side by side--lado a lado--so you can practice and improve your reading skills in your new language while enjoying the support of your native tongue. This way, you'll avoid the inconvenience of constantly having to look up unfamiliar words and expressions in a dictionary. Read as much as you can understand, and then look to the facing page for help if necessary. As you read, you can check your comprehension by comparing the two versions of the story. You'll also find a bilingual vocabulary list at the end of the book, so you'll have a handy reference for new words.

Stories from Puerto Rico/Historias de Puerto Rico gives you the change to

• Enjoy 18 well-known Puerto Rican short stories that stretch from the dawn of creation to the twentieth century
• Fine-tune your language skills while gaining insight into the rich cultural heritage of the Puerto Rico people
• Improve your reading and listening skills with free audio downloads of six chapters from the book at mhprofessional.com

Robert L. Muckley and Adele Martinez-Santiago are experienced Spanish educators and authors. ... Read more

Product Description
A reader for your intermediate through early advanced Spanish students.

Leyendas de Puerto Rico (Robert L Muckley and Adela Martinez-Santiago) offers your students fascinating insights into the culture of Puerto Rico as they read these legends. Bilingual side glosses define difficult terms and the readings end with questions and exercises that boost reading and language skills. This reader is softcover, 6” × 9”, and 128 pages in length. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great book for young readers.
My son is learning how to read and write spanish, and this book has been a great help! ... Read more

Product Description
"Now everybody loves Puerto Rican culture," says a Puerto Rican schoolteacher and festival organizer, "but that's exactly the problem." Thus begins this major examination of cultural nationalism as a political construct involving party ideologies, corporate economic goals, and grassroots cultural groups. Author Arlene Davila focuses on the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture, the government institution charged with defining authenticated views of national identity since the 1950s, and on popular festival organizers to illuminate contestations over appropriate representations of culture in the increasingly mass-mediated context of contemporary Puerto Rico. She examines the creation of an essentialist view of nationhood based on a peasant culture and a "unifying" Hispanic heritage, and the ways in which grassroots organizations challenge and reconfigure definitions of national identity through their own activities and representations.Davila pays particular attention to the increasing prominence of corporate sponsorship in determining what is distinguished as authentic "Puerto Rican culture" and discusses the politicization of culture as a discourse to debate and legitimize conflicting claims from selling commercial products to advocating divergent status options for the island.In so doing, Davila illuminates the prospects for cultural identities in an increasingly transnational context by showing the growth of cultural nationalism to be intrinsically connected to forms of political action directed to the realm of culture and cultural politics. This in-depth examination also makes clear that despite contemporary concerns with "authenticity," commercialism is an inescapable aspect of all cultural expressions on the island. Author note: Arlene M. Davila is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University. She has previous work experience with museums and cultural institutions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the best books on Puerto Rico, a must read.
This is a very acute study of cultural politics in Puerto Rico. The author exposes the dynamics that make culture such an important forum to debate identity among Puerto Ricans on the island and abroad.It is an excellent book and a must read for anyone interested in contemporary Puerto Rican studies.

Offers a good case study of state sponsored culture.
After reading this book I can say that Davila offers a good case study of the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture has historically acted as an authority which sanctions specific cultural products/practices as Puerto Rican. Her description of the struggle over authenticity at the Bacardi Festival is excellent. However, her analysis of how identity/ies are negotiated and framed suffers for lack of theoretical rigour. Her understanding of nationalism and her notion of nationalism as somehow inclusive is a case in point. This book also betrays a lack of historical knowledge about Puerto Rican political history as a number of errors concerning political party history appear in the text. The main value of this book is as an empirical case study on which others can build a serious analysis of how culture and identity are contested in Puerto Rico. ... Read more

Product Description
Puerto Rico had been under Spanish control for hundreds of years before the Spanish-American War brought it into the control of the United States. The island transformed from an agricultural colony to a densely populated American commonwealth. In "Puerto Rico in American History", Richard Worth examines the island s history, from the early clash between Spanish colonists and the Taino people to the uncertain future of this growing nation, with some residents who want to remain an American commonwealth, those who want statehood, and those who want independence. ... Read more

Product Description
Neither immigrants nor ethnics, neither foreign nor "hyphenated Americans" in the usual sense of that term, Puerto Ricans in New York have created a distinct identity both on the island of Puerto Rico and in the cultural landscape of the United States. Juan Flores considers the uniqueness of Puerto Rican culture and identity in relation to that of other Latino groups in the United States -as well as to other minority groups, especially African Americans. Architecture and urban space, literary traditions, musical styles, and cultural movements provide some of the sites and moments of a cultural world defined by the interplay of continuity and transformation, heritage and innovation, roots and fusion. Exploring this wide range of cultural expression -both in the diaspora and in Puerto Rico -Flores highlights the rich complexities and fertile contradictions of Latino identity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity
The book arrived in new condition.Thank you for processing my book order quickly.

Had him as a teacher
If you're at all interested in Latin American culture you'll love this book and he's an amazing person.He'll tal kto you forever about the subject and he's highly intelligent.

A five rating, but with a footnote.
While Juan Flores is perceptive in his discussion of the Puerto Rican component of Latino culture, and discusses other major critics like Perez Firmat and Stavans, I was frankly surprised not to see any discussion of William Luis's Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States, which in my estimation is as important as those written by the critics Flores discusses.The value of Luis's study is that he addresses the same Puerto Rican community mentioned in Flores' book, but Luis also contextualizes this community by considering its relation to the Cuban and Dominican components of Latino culture. Anyone interested in understanding Latino literature and culture should also read Dance Between Two Cultures, which contains perceptive readings of Latino Caribbean literature unavailable in any other study.

Not just for Puerto Ricans.....
The title of Mr. Flores' book might be a little deceiving for those who are not familiar with the subject matter. Mr. Flores uses music as a jumping off point for some very thought provoking themes that pertain (in my opinion) to all Latino's. Juan Flores goes from scholarly themes like colonialism to thoughts on thefuneral of Cortijo and the history of the Boogaloo phenomena in New York City.

Mr. Flores makes you stop and think, then think again about issues you may have had preconceived notions about. I really enjoyed being challenged intellectually as I read this book.

I recently attended a lecture/performance (at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City) of "From Bomba to Hip-Hop" conducted by Mr. Flores, music historian Rene Lopez and Mike Wallace (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, "Gotham.") True to form, it was a very unique, educational and entertaining experience.

A book that needs to be a major part of contemporary America
As a beginning graduate student in Latina/o Studies, I have been asking myself a simple question over and over: "Where have I been?"I have gone through public education in the United States for 17 years of my life, and have only recently found that there have been people writing since the start of the 1900s about the issues, experiences, struggles, and passions that I have thought were uniquely mine.Piri Thomas published _Down These Mean Streets_ in 1967.I just read it this past summer, my mother--right after I gave it to her.And the thought that has wondered in is, "why wasn't I told about his book earlier?"Is Piri Thomas' experience, a bond with African American culture that Juan Flores addresses in his book, such a marginal experience in American life, that it took a suggestion by Amazon.com for a man with 4 years of university education to be aware of the book?As the population of Latino/as in the United States grows to the levels of being the largest minority group in the country, there will have to be a shifting of Latina/o literature, theory, and any cultural products from the margins of American life to the center contemporary discussion. It is these products that Juan Flores probes and analyses with keen insight that places the Puerto Rican aspect of the Latino experience into mainstream intellectual thought.From "the Madonna incident" in Puerto Rico, to the ties that Puerto Ricans have with Hip-Hop, and the current status of Puerto Rico that hesadly calls a "Lite Colony," Flores' book is one that should be read by anyone interested in the affairs of American culture. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1983, this book remains the only full-length study documenting the historical development of the Puerto Rican community in the United States. Expanded to bring it up to the present, Virginia Sánchez Korrol's work traces the growth of the early Puerto Rican settlements--"colonias"--into the unique, vibrant, and well-defined community of today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

very good
i received this in one week, and it's almost brand new, very good condition. the price is low. :D

very informative and positive history of a New York City community
I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to dispel the negative stereotypes of Puerto Ricans created by such fictional works as West Side Story, etc. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Insightful reader
I am included in this book as one of the authors dealt with. Never in my years have I found a more insightful reader of my work than Larry La Fountain. He has uncovered ideas in my poems that I thought could only be perceived by me as an author. Chapeaux to Larry!

Ricans in America
La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. "Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora", University of Minnesota Press, 2009.


Ricans in America

Amos Lassen

Many of us do not consider Puerto Ricans do be diverse but this book shows us differently. There are Rican communities in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco and although they have al come here from the same place their lives are very different. They faced discrimination in Puerto Rico and they face it here so that is what the common thread is. La Fountain looks at the differences in gender, historical movement and generation and shows how Rican queer identity has changed over time and how it is experienced in different ways. He begins in the 1960's and with the writings ofLuis Rafael Sanchez in New York City of the 1970's, moves onto the 80's in Philadelphia and New Jersey and to the 80's and 90's. He bases his work on the authors who wrote during the period. We see how sexuality has shaped and defined Puerto Rican American culture. This is a fascinating study and although it is about a specific group much can be applied to other ethnic groups.
... Read more

Product Description
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. 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. ... Read more

Product Description
The analysis of the constitutional development of Puerto Rico has been dominated by two major perspectives: political gradualism and classical colonialism. Gradualist analysis suggests that the constitutional development of Puerto Rico followed a pattern of gradual progression toward the goal of increasing self-government. A variant of this approach views the creation of particular constitutional laws for Puerto Rico as the result of United States experimentation in colonial policy-making. The classical colonialism approach presents the Puerto Rican constitutional laws as instruments of economic and military exploitation of Puerto Rico. Both approaches oversimplify the social complexity of those involved in the creation of constitutional laws. This book provides an alternative view which recognizes the role of social conflicts and social contradictions in the development of the constitutional laws of Puerto Rico. ... Read more