Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Preface Part I Founding Spectacles1 Weighing In Theory: Puerto Ricans and American Culture2 1898: The Trauma of Literature, the Shame of Identity 3 Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and U.S. Puerto Rican Identity Part II Boricuasin the Middle4 From Puerto Rico with Trash: Holly Woodlawn's A Low Life in High Heels5 The Writing on the Wall: The Life and Passion of Jean-Michel Basquiat 6 Flagging Madonna: Performing a Puerto Rican-American Erotics Part III Boricua Anatomies7 Rosario's Tongue: Rosario Ferre and the Commodi?cation of Island Literature 8 Barbie's Hair: Selling Out Puerto Rican Identity in the Global Market 9 Jennifer's Butt: Valorizing the Puerto Rican Racialized Female Body 10 Ricky's Hips: The Queerness of Puerto Rican "White" Culture Postscript: Words from the Grave Notes Index About the Author

Promotional Information

The first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visability and cultural impact. The author looks as such pop icons as JLo and Ricky Martin as well as West Side Story.

About the Author

Frances Negron-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, journalist, and cultural critic. She is the co-editor of Puerto Rican Jam and author of Anatomy of a Smile. She currently teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

Reviews

"A perspicacious new book and one of the most intellectually exciting works of recent years, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of American Culture gives new meaning to the idea of the "pleasure of the text."--QBR "Provocative and broad-ranging ... This eclectic, always interesting work will be certain to elicit discussion among faculty and students of ethnic studies, US popular culture, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies."--Choice "Mixing the down and dirty with high culture to come up with good look at the transculture effects of it all." --San Juan Star a groundbreaking piece of work on the persistence of colonialism-irreverent, tragicomical, and bittersweet. --New West Indian Guide "Important, timely, and innovative, Boricua Pop is a stellar addition to a body of work that grows in importance over time. Negron-Muntaner's book is eagerly anticipated." --Jose Quiroga, author of Tropics of Desire Such an analysis uncovers the transcultural origins of all U.S. cultural production, hopefully provoking additional work that reconsiders and articulates these genealogies.-Film Quarterly"Boricua Pop" is a foundational text in American, Latino/a, Queer, Performance, and Cultural Studies." --Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, Mount Holyoke College