This book undertakes the most comprehensive and theoretically rigorous examination to date of Luis Rafael S¡nchez's work in the context of cultural politics in Puerto Rico, and of the international and regional dimensions of S¡nchez's work in relation to

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis.

Identity - national and cultural - forms the thematic backbone of the Puerto Rican essay canon. When reading this canon it seems that this island "nation" suffers from insularism and docility, to cite its most famous essayists. Yet a new zeitgeist arrives on the essay scene in the 1980s that contests this narrative. This dissertation examines how José Luis González, Luis Rafael Sánchez and Ana Lydia Vega "talk back" to the essay canon. They restore overlooked members of the nation who are linked to popular culture(s) in this study: Afro-Puerto Ricans, circular migrants and women. With this inclusivity, the essay form changes, especially with Sánchez and Vega. Therefore, I am attentive to both politics and aesthetics as these essayists challenge racist, elitist and sexist ideas. This intervention, associated with postmodernism with two essayists, allows for new subjectivities to emerge. In Chapter One, José Luis González initiates this aperture with "El país de cuatro pisos" as he denounces what Michel Foucault calls "sources of power" in order to incorporate the Afro-Puerto Rican. Read from a perspective of power and representation this essay succeeds at challenging racism but falls short in representing the popular Afro-Puerto Rican. The second chapter examines how Luis Rafael Sánchez's essay "La guagua aérea" disrupts the tenor of previous essayists with an image of a working class and diasporic nation. Interpreted as a theatrical text, I explore how Sánchez undoes "Puerto Rican docility" and the authoritarian voices of previous essayists. Concepts of détour, retour and oraliture inform the analysis of the "thresholds" in this essay. The final chapter examines how Ana Lydia Vega shuns the metaphors of González and Sánchez and brings the essay back to a local front. With two essays "Vegetal" and "De bípeda desplumada a Escritora Puertorriqueña (con E y P machúsculas)" I examine how she questions patriarchal and hegemonic discourses. Vega effectively unravels traditional essayistic forms and voices with "polyrhythmic" essays that imitate popular musical structures. I conclude with recent essayists Carlos Pabón and Rubén Ríos Ávila demonstrating how the metanarrative of nationhood continues to disintegrate, but without popular culture as a creative or symbolic force.

Exploring cultural expressions of Puerto Rican queer migration from the Caribbean to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes analyzes how artists have portrayed their lives and the discrimination they have faced in both Puerto Rico and the United States. Highlighting cultural and political resistance within Puerto Rico’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender subcultures, La Fountain-Stokes pays close attention to differences of gender, historical moment, and generation, arguing that Puerto Rican queer identity changes over time and is experienced in very different ways. He traces an arc from 1960s Puerto Rico and the writings of Luis Rafael Sánchez to New York City in the 1970s and 1980s (Manuel Ramos Otero), Philadelphia and New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s (Luz María Umpierre and Frances Negrón-Muntaner), and Chicago (Rose Troche) and San Francisco (Erika López) in the 1990s, culminating with a discussion of Arthur Avilés and Elizabeth Marrero’s recent dance-theater work in the Bronx. Proposing a radical new conceptualization of Puerto Rican migration, this work reveals how sexuality has shaped and defined the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.

Containing roughly 850 entries about Spanish-language literature throughout the world, this expansive work provides coverage of the varied countries, ethnicities, time periods, literary movements, and genres of these writings. Providing a thorough introduction to Spanish-language literature worldwide and across time is a tall order. However, World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia contains roughly 850 entries on both major and minor authors, themes, genres, and topics of Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, affording an amazingly comprehensive reference collection in a single work. This encyclopedia describes the growing diversity within national borders, the increasing interdependence among nations, and the myriad impacts of Spanish literature across the globe. All countries that produce literature in Spanish in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia are represented, covering both canonical authors and emerging contemporary writers and trends. Underrepresented writings—such as texts by women writers, queer and Afro-Hispanic texts, children's literature, and works on relevant but less studied topics such as sports and nationalism—also appear. While writings throughout the centuries are covered, those of the 20th and 21st centuries receive special consideration.