239540 "No, not yet I will not proclaim myself, a total child of any land:" Writing Puerto Rico, presente! (BS) (SoSe 2013)

Following the advice by the Nuyorican poet Jesus Colon—Jesús Colón, “To deserve a people’s love, you must know them. You must learn to appreciate their history, their culture, their values, their aspirations for human advancement and freedom,” in this course we will try to appreciate the meaning of what it means to be a Boricua, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Hispanic, Latina@, Hispanic, Puerto Rican on the mainland, AmeRícan, asimila@, Puerto Riiiican! To this end, we will engage with poetry, journalism, theatre, essays, autobiography that tell us much about the Puerto Rican people, their history, identity dilemmas, self-understanding, anxieties, hopes, present day realities. The study of these literary selections should help us value the remarkable journey of the Puerto Rican people whose history has been most decisively shaped by conquest, colonialism, but also by the just as decisive and stubborn struggle, as the poet Tato Laviera states, not to be absorbed by any form of mythical melting pot or latinidad/mestizaje in the effort to define “the new america, humane america.”

Bibliography

Required Reading:

A Class Reader will be available for students

AmeRícan by Tato Laviera
Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales