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BOOK PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION:
"Puerto Ricans in the United States" [Greenwood,
2000] |
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THE ROCKY PAST OF PUERTO RICAN STUDIES |
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And you can all write this book after you have the classroom experience
of dealing with our students and finding out how they have this desperate
need to search for who they are and then understanding that we are and that
we´re becoming part of the social fabric of the universtity -- of the canon
-- and everyday it´s a struggle as we know and is pointed out in the book.
This book is really about what Virginia Sanchez called the Puerto Rican
struggle. We´re still struggling to define, to catch up, to be validated.
we´re still, as Emilia Morales Nadal, someone I know very well, once said
we´re still in training when it comes to the university. They´re always
telling us how it is that we should acculturate. So in that sense it´s not
a book that follows in the tradition when you talk about groups that have
to acculturate, that have to learn American ways. It really belies its title
and it belies the philosophy of Greenwood and what they wanted to put forward.
On the other hand, something else that I found refreshing that -- we got into a politics somewhat destructive I might say when we first came into the academy in the late sixties, early seventies there was a great deal of struggle and the sruggle as might be expected were about some of these issues--about definition of identity of where we fit. And boy did we have some polemics -- to the point that, being passionate, being Latino -- it´s not a stereotype. Sometimes it got down to what -- I remember the old expression: When you can´t dialogue any more because you won´t see my point of view the way I see it, then it´s fist to face. And we carried out a very intense, passionate struggle within the academy as to who had the right line with reference to who we were in this country. Many of you here who are viejitos, like Pedro Caban, for example, might remember the definitions, the theoretical discussions as to whether Puerto Ricans were part of a divided nation or a national minority within the context of the United States. And of course many of us got into Marxism through the very preoccupation with identity and we got into Marxist politics and we got into groups and organizations that fervently thought -- each felt individually that we had la verdad por el rabo, we had truth by the tale. I mention this because fortunately Maria did not have to go through that. I think Maria has come in when some of us have laid down our swords, we don´t attack each other as we would-- we were doing it out of passion, out of a fiery dignity within us to define, but it was destructive to the extent that it took a long period of time for that to heal, for the academy to come together. For us to coalesce around principles of unity -- another favorite expression of the late sixties/early seventies. We finally got -- you know, we finally dio pied con bola. We finally put our foot on the peddle and we began to look at ourselves and we have a lot to contribute and we have a lot to sum up about that generation to pass on to young scholars like Maria Perez y Gonazalez and I would include Professor Whalen as well. Because those experiences have led us to different paradigms of understanding. We´re dealing with students who are under cultural assault in this country if not on other fronts where some of the things we took for granted coming into the university. That we had a Puerto Rican movement, that we were so with it and we´re finding that we´re going back to square one when we´re dealing with many of our students. So the second reading of the book was in that tenor -- of saying, this is a book that was written after being in touch with Puerto Rican students, Latino students and other students who want to know about us, in the classroom setting. |
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