Mainland Passage: The Cultural Anomaly of Puerto Rico

by Ramón E. Soto-Crespo

Overview

Disputes conventional thinking about the political status of Puerto Rico

One-third of the population of Puerto Rico moved to New York City during the mid-twentieth century. Since this massive migration, Puerto Rican literature and culture have grappled with an essential change in self-perception. Mainland Passage examines the history of that transformation, the political struggle over its representation, and the ways it has been imagined in Puerto Rico and in the work of Latina/o fiction writers.

Ramón E. Soto-Crespo argues that the most significant consequence of this migration is the creation of a cultural and political borderland state. He intervenes in the Puerto Rico status debate to show that the two most discussed options—Puerto Rico’s becoming either a fully federated state of the United States or an independent nation—represent false alternatives, and he forcefully reasons that Puerto Rico should be recognized as an anomalous political entity that does not conform to categories of political belonging.

Investigating a fundamental shift in the way Puerto Rican writers, politicians, and scholars have imagined their cultural identity, Mainland Passage demonstrates that Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status exemplifies a counterhegemonic logic and introduces a vital new approach to understanding Puerto Rican culture and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816655885
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	08/05/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Ramón Soto-Crespo is associate professor and director of Latina/o studies at SUNY–Buffalo.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xxiii

Introduction Neither Colony nor Nation 1

1 State and Artifice: Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá and Puerto Rican Painting 23

2 The Mainland Passage: Luis Muñoz Marín's Borderland State 57

3 Escaping Colonialism: How to Do Things with American Imperialism 82

4 Out of the Mainland: Nuyorican Poetry and Boricua Politics 119

Notes 145

Works Cited 153

Index 165