Writing Off the Hyphen: New Critical Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora

Front Cover
José L. Torres-Padilla, Carmen Haydée Rivera
University of Washington Press, 2008 - Literary Criticism - 361 pages

The sixteen essays in Writing Off the Hyphen approach the literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora from current theoretical positions, with provocative and insightful results. The authors analyze how the diasporic experience of Puerto Ricans is played out in the context of class, race, gender, and sexuality and how other themes emerging from postcolonialism and postmodernism come into play. Their critical work also demonstrates an understanding of how the process of migration and the relations between Puerto Rico and the United States complicate notions of cultural and national identity as writers confront their bilingual, bicultural, and transnational realities.

The collection has considerable breadth and depth. It covers earlier, undertheorized writers such as Luisa Capetillo, Pedro Juan Labarthe, Bernardo Vega, Pura Belpré, Arturo Schomburg, and Graciany Miranda Archilla. Prominent writers such as Rosario Ferré and Judith Ortiz Cofer are discussed alongside often-neglected writers such as Honolulu-based Rodney Morales and gay writer Manuel Ramos Otero. The essays cover all the genres and demonstrate that current theoretical ideas and approaches create exciting opportunities and possibilities for the study of Puerto Rican diasporic literature.

From inside the book

Contents

Earlier Voices
16
Early Puerto Rican Writing in the United
31
Luisa Capetillo Anarchy and Boricua
52
Ethnogenesis and Three Early
81
Anarchism in the Work of Aurora Levins Morales
107
Notes on the Emergence
125
The Political Left and the Development of Nuyorican Poetry
143
Ernesto Quiñonezs
165
Reworking a Tradition
221
Mapping Puerto Rican Collective Memory
239
Translating Home in the Work of Judith Ortiz Cofer
256
The Road the Journey and Home
274
Identity of the Diasporican Homosexual in the Literary
295
Manuel Ramos Oteros Queer Metafictional Resurrection
313
Transmigratory Biculturalism
332
Contributors
351

Strategic Puerto Ricanness in Pedro
184
Rodney Morales Rides the Diaspora
201

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