The Puerto Rican nation on the move : identities on the island & in the United States /

Politically subordinate to the US and a colony (officially a "freely associated state") in all but name since its annexation after the Spanish-Cuban-American War (1898), Puerto Rico and its largely Spanish-speaking and multiracial people have unique identity issues in the Americas. Duany (anthropology, Univ. of Puerto Rico) asserts that, despite lack of sovereignty, Puerto Rico is a kind of "nation" in that Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora have managed to create "cultural nationalism without a state." As a "nation on the move," identity formation necessarily takes place in a transnational framework, thereby disrupting rigid traditional notions of nationhood--territory and borders, language, economy, citizenship, sovereignty. Duany argues that Puerto Rican culture on the island and in diasporic communities cannot be separated, but form one continuum toward the construction and representation of a Puerto Rican "peoplehood." He examines a rich and bilingual trove of documentary evidence, textual and graphic, to illustrate his thesis--ethnographies by early anthropologists, American photographic images, public representations of Puerto Rican identity, official discourses on Puerto Rican migration--and discusses representation of racial identity among Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. This is a compelling, imaginative, and nicely written work, sure to provoke thought and arguments. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Hu-DeHart Brown University