BOOK PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION: "Puerto Ricans in the United States" [Greenwood, 2000] Guest Speaker: Dr. Anthony Nadal

BUILDS ON THE RESEARCH OF PUERTO RICAN SCHOLARS

So that the book is kaleidescopic and, at the same time, it focuses in on particular issues that are extremely important to the new generation of Latino youth that we have today. It´s a book, I believe, that grew out of her experience from teachiing one course Introduction to Puerto Rican/Latino Studies where we get students who come in gun-ho and want to find out about rap music and salsa music, others who want to find out about their identity, others who want to know why it is that there is intermarriage, you know, why didn´t you stay pure to your Puerto Rican roots and that sort of thing and the book addresses so many of those issues but it does so in a way that, I believe, is part of the scholarship of a new generation of scholars that are coming up -- and I consider myself now de los viejitos, as they say. Maria is that generation that will take over as well as others -- if we are going to have the departments and programs exist. And what she did was, she treated the material and, this is very important coming from the standpoint of being a puertorriqueña, she treated it with dignity and respect which is something that I don´t always find in that dispassionate view -- again I´m not being sectarian here in talking about the tradition of these books by Glazier, Moynihan, Fitzpatrick, and others, Wagenheim, who have written about the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. But it´s always from the standpoint of saying, "There they are, this is what they look like." You know, we´re museum pieces to some extent. And even when they tend to be sympathetic, there is a dispassionate view, there is a disconnected view that leaves you a kind of empty feeling in your stomach and perhaps a dry mouth, doesn´t quite satisfy because you know that it is written by someone who is a member of that group and someone who is going through the experience ot defining, not only defining yourself within the context of the university, but helping students that you´re influencing try to define themselves. And in that regard I found the book very refreshing. In its treatment of music and in culture, in its treatment of the history of puertorriqueños, etc., it really does belie what I consider the melting pot approach that the series seems to be pushing by talking about these new Americans who will eventually become part of the social fabric of the United States.