A01=María Acosta Cruz
American Literature Initiatives series
annexation
Author_María Acosta Cruz
Category=JBSL
Category=NHTB
countercultural cool
cultural touchstones
culture
disconnect
Dream Nation
elections
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
everyday concerns
fantasy
future
Generación del 30
heroes
history
iconography
identity
imagination
imaginings
literature
local communities
María Acosta Cruz
national independence
nostalgia
popular culture
Puerto Rican voters
rap music
reality
rhetoric
stories
symbols
Tego Calderón
texts
U.S. Latino culture
urgent warning
Product details
- ISBN 9780813565460
- Weight: 313g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2014
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Over the past fifty years, Puerto Rican voters have roundly rejected any calls for national independence. Yet the rhetoric and iconography of independence have been defining features of Puerto Rican literature and culture. In the provocative new book Dream Nation, María Acosta Cruz investigates the roots and effects of this profound disconnect between cultural fantasy and political reality.
Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served many competing purposes. They have given authority to the island’s literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and still helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture.
In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island’s people.
A volume in the American Literature Initiatives series
Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served many competing purposes. They have given authority to the island’s literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and still helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture.
In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island’s people.
A volume in the American Literature Initiatives series
MARÍA ACOSTA CRUZ is an associate professor of Spanish at Clark University. Her work has appeared in the journals Hispanófila, Revista Iberoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Chasqui Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana.
