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

 
A GOOD PRIMER ON PUERTO RICAN/LATINO STUDIES
At first, you would read Maria´s book and take an introductory course and then you would get into those strands that Maria opens up and she opens up very well. The book, just, like Professor Whalen´s book, is very well-researched. She didn´t leave any stone unturned and coming to the faculty -- she also gave us a lot of credit at Brooklyn College and the department, I might as well throw that in, but she built on the research, on the foundational research of puertorriqueños who were writing about puertorriqueños and I think that is very important.

And of course a great deal of due has to be given to people like Clara Rodríguez, Virginia Sanchez-Korol, Juan Flores because Maria did research that -- as a good researcher who is conscientious and also a very dedicated woman to her task, she has been cited a number times at the college as favorite teacher by the graduating class, not only by Latino students but non-Latinos. What she did was she took the experience of teaching and the amassed experience of the impressions -- the reflections that students give you when you present material -- that feedback and she has been able to write a book that really hones in on those concepts. So it´s not just to read about the Puerto Rican experience from the standpoint of all these areas -- of music, history, etc. But it´s how it opens up, how it helps to raise particular questions, as any good scholar would, and direct the students to pick up those strands and then read into material that is much more focussed, perhaps, also more esoteric, but very focussed. It is, perhaps, fortuitous that tonight we have the presentation of two books that really compliment each other.

 



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