Books about Boricua from Amazon.com

MANY CULTURES * ONE WORLD
"Boricua is what Puerto Ricans call one another as a term of endearment, respect, and cultural affirmation; it is a timeless declaration that transcends gender and color. Boricua is a powerful word that tells the origin and history of the Puerto Rican people."
--From the Introduction
From the sun-drenched beaches of a beautiful, flamboyan-covered island to the cool, hard pavement of the fierce South Bronx, the remarkable journey of the Puerto Rican people is a rich story full of daring defiance, courageous strength, fierce passions, and dangerous politics--and it is a story that continues to be told today. Long ignored by Anglo literature studies, here are more than fifty selections of poetry, fiction, plays, essays, monologues, screenplays, and speeches from some of the most vibrant and original voices in Puerto Rican literature.
* Jack Agüeros * Miguel Algarín * Julia de Burgos * Pedro Albizu Campos * Lucky CienFuegos * Judith Ortiz Cofer * Jesus Colon * Victor Hern ndez Cruz * José de Diego * Martin Espada * Sandra Maria Esteves * Ronald Fernandez * José Luis Gonzalez * Migene Gonzalez-Wippler * Maria Graniela de Pruetzel * Pablo Guzman * Felipe Luciano * René Marqués * Luis Muñoz Marín * Nicholasa Mohr * Aurora Levins Morales * Martita Morales * Rosario Morales * Willie Perdomo * Pedro Pietri * Miguel Piñero * Reinaldo Povod * Freddie Prinze * Geraldo Rivera * Abraham Rodriguez, Jr. * Clara E. Rodriguez * Esmeralda Santiago * Roberto Santiago * Pedro Juan Soto * Piri Thomas * Edwin Torres * José Torres * Joseph B. Vasquez * Ana Lydia Vega.
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View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

”This study fills an important gap by presenting a cogent and historically rich account of community empowerment in the intellectual tradition of political economy.”—Citylimits.org

“José Sánchez offers a fresh new way of thinking about Puerto Rican politics. Guided by a dynamic and suggestive concept of political power, the author navigates his way deftly through the thickets of volatile debates and controversy in tracking a century-long history of radical class and ethnic speaking-truth-to-power in the Latino vein. Taking us back to the cigar worker strikes before the 1920s, the story of Boricua Power goes on to probe the political scene in the post-World War II era, and then sheds new light on the Young Lords’ Party and the exciting political watershed of the Sixties and Seventies in New York City. To sidestep the pitfalls of blame-the-victim pathologizing on the one hand, and wishful triumphalism on the other, Sánchez’s metaphor of the play of power as dance is fun, convincing, and thoroughly apropos.”
—Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity

"A well-written, historically informed, and original treatment of the Puerto Rican cultural and ethno-class struggle in America. Boricua Power is scholarly yet heartfelt and recommended to anyone interested in ethnicity and social power."
—Michael Parenti, author of The Culture Struggle

Where does power come from? Why does it sometimes disappear? How do groups, like the Puerto Rican community, become impoverished, lose social influence, and become marginal to the rest of society? How do they turn things around, increase their wealth, and become better able to successfully influence and defend themselves?

Boricua Power explains the creation and loss of power as a product of human efforts to enter, keep or end relationships with others in an attempt to satisfy passions and interests, using a theoretical and historical case study of one community--Puerto Ricans in the United States. Using archival, historical and empirical data, Boricua Power demonstrates that power rose and fell for this community with fluctuations in the passions and interests that defined the relationship between Puerto Ricans and the larger U.S. society.

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View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction.

"A perspicacious new book and one of the most intellectually exciting works of recent years, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of American Culture gives new meaning to the idea of the >>pleasure of the text.<<"—QBR

"Provocative and broad-ranging . . . This eclectic, always interesting work will be certain to elicit discussion among faculty and students of ethnic studies, US popular culture, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies."—Choice

"Mixing the down and dirty with high culture to come up with good look at the transculture effects of it all."
—San Juan Star

”a groundbreaking piece of work on the persistence of colonialism-irreverent, tragicomical, and bittersweet.”
—New West Indian Guide

"Important, timely, and innovative, Boricua Pop is a stellar addition to a body of work that grows in importance over time. Negrón-Muntaner's book is eagerly anticipated."
—José Quiroga, author of Tropics of Desire

”Such an analysis uncovers the transcultural origins of all U.S. cultural production, hopefully provoking additional work that reconsiders and articulates these genealogies.”—FIlm Quarterly

"Boricua Pop" is a foundational text in American, Latino/a, Queer, Performance, and Cultural Studies."
—Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Mount Holyoke College

Boricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negrón-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical West Side Story to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicle Seva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferré to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negrón-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinating blend of low life and high culture: a highly original, challenging, and lucid new work by one of our most talented cultural critics.

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An exciting romp through the poverty neighborhoods of Santurce, Puerto Rico.The precocious voice of a boy urchin introduces you to a spiritual struggle as he fends for survival. His complicated family includes the very best and worst characters imaginable. His violent and loving father, papi Guelo, ; his introverted egotistical mother, mami Letty; his macho amoral gang-chief uncle, Freddy; and his despot criolla grandmother, mami Provi. This story captures accurately the essence of an era through his eyes as he overcomes formidable odds in the 1940's and 1950's. From the ghetto to suburbia he resists all evil with the help of his magical dark and gifted step-sister, Paula, whose deep religious faith encompasses Christianity and the seven African Powers. Paula and Hector will keep you engrossed through culinary and musical descriptions and mesmerize you with their magical rituals, culture and beliefs..
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Esta es una recopilación de más de 1,000 palabras y frases de uso cotidiano por los puertorriqueños. Las definiciones aquí contenidas, muchas veces con toques de humor, no sólo le harán reir sino, entender mejor a los hijos de una nación repartida geográficamente entre los que viven en la Isla de Puerto Rico y los que viven en los Estados Unidos continentales y el resto del mundo. Este diccionario incluye desde palabras y frases de raíz taína o africana y que aún se utilizan a diario, las utilizadas por las abuelas, así como las acuñadas más recientemente por los jovenes. Igualmente, incluye las adaptadas por los puertorriqueños en los EEUU y aquellas que, de invención boricua han sido incorporadas al Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Entre otras palabras encontrará, por ejemplo, las definiciones de ¡Ay bendito!, trililí, frio pelú, chuleria en pote, pitorro, fufú, o estar como "la Puerca de Juan Bobo". Sin duda este es un excelente regalo para cualquier puertorriqueñ@..
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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. These chapters focus on issues of culture, demography, language, economic status, politics, and community organization. Eminently useful in college-level courses that deal with Latinos and other ethnic groups in U.S. society, the book ends with essays by Angelo Falc¢n and Clara E. Rodr¡guez that assess the legacy, current status, and future prospects of the Puerto Rican community in New York. Gabriel Haslip-Viera, City College, CUNY, is the editor of Ta¡no Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics. Angelo Falc¢n, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, is the author of numerous articles on Puerto Rican/Latino politics. F,lix V. Matos-Rodr¡guez, Hunter College, is the author of Women in San Juan: 1820 1868..
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