Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence

Illustrating its points with figures like Pedro Albizu Campos and Lolita Lebron, along with events like the Cerro Maravilla killings and the protests in Vieques for the removal of the Navy, this section demonstrates how social elements have been appropriated and disseminated as powerful narratives t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Centro Journal 2015, Vol.27 (1), p.260-262
Main Author: Esterrich, Carmelo
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Culture
Fiction
Imagery
Literature
Memory
Narratives
Negotiation
Puerto Rican literature
Puerto Rico
Santiago, Esmeralda
Sovereignty
Websites
Writers
Writing
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Summary:Illustrating its points with figures like Pedro Albizu Campos and Lolita Lebron, along with events like the Cerro Maravilla killings and the protests in Vieques for the removal of the Navy, this section demonstrates how social elements have been appropriated and disseminated as powerful narratives that effectively fanned the fires of the independence struggle, through fiction writing and bumper stickers, through billboards and flags, through websites and electoral campaigns. Following that introduction, five chapters examine various facets related to how the discourses of independence are adopted and adapted in diverse Puerto Rican artistic manifestations, both in the island and in the United States mainland: from the literary canon assembled in Mercedes Lopez-Barak's recent anthology of 20(TM)-century Puerto Rican literature, in which, Acosta Cruz argues, independence reigns supreme (chapter 1), to those (few) writers who break with a simplistic tradition of independence (chapter 2); from the nationalistic appropriations and expropriations between what she cleverly calls "the verdant Lush Land" and the imagery of urban congestion in visual arts and literature (chapter 3), to fiction writing's uses and abuses of history and myth (chapter 4), without forgetting how Puerto Ricans in the United States have negotiated those dreams of independence, swaying between nostalgia and reconstruction (chapter 5).
ISSN:1538-6279
2163-2960