From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity / Edition 1

by Juan Flores

Overview

Neither immigrants nor ethnics, neither foreign nor "hyphenated Americans" in the usual sense of that term, Puerto Ricans in New York have created a distinct identity both on the island of Puerto Rico and in the cultural landscape of the United States. Juan Flores considers the uniqueness of Puerto Rican culture and identity in relation to that of other Latino groups in the United States—as well as to other minority groups, especially African Americans. Architecture and urban space, literary traditions, musical styles, and cultural movements provide some of the sites and moments of a cultural world defined by the interplay of continuity and transformation, heritage and innovation, roots and fusion. Exploring this wide range of cultural expression—both in the diaspora and in Puerto Rico—Flores highlights the rich complexities and fertile contradictions of Latino identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231110778
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/24/2000
Series:	Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.99(h) x 0.56(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Juan Flores is professor of Black and Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College and professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has written and lectured widely on the subject of Puerto Rican and Latino culture. His publications include Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Culture and La venganza de Cortijo y otros ensayos.

Table of Contents

Prelude: From Bomba to Hip-Hop
Introduction
1. "pueblo pueblo'': Popular Culture in Time
2. The Lite Colonial: Diversions of Puerto Rican Discourse
3. Broken English Memories: Languages in the Trans-Colony
4. "Salvacion Casita'': Space, Performance, and Community
5. "Cha-Cha with a Backbeat'': Songs and Stories of Latin Boogaloo
6. Puerto Rocks: Rap, Roots, and Amnesia
7. Pan-Latino/Trans-Latino: Puerto Ricans in the "New Nueva York''
8. Life Off the Hyphen: Latino Literature and Nuyorican Traditions
9. The Latino Imaginary: Meanings of Community and Identity
10. Latino Studies: New Contexts, New Concepts
Postscript 1998: "None of the Above''

What People are Saying About This

Julia Álvarez

As our music becomes popular, our books become classroom texts, our foods deck the covers of magazines, and we are lauded as the new spice of American culture -- or alternatively feared as its new invaders -- we become lumped together as Latinos and Hispanics: the new millennial minority. All the more need for a book like Juan Flores's From Bomba to Hip-Hop, an encyclopedic and yet deftly written study of Puerto Rican culture and Latino identity.... [This book] helps define our complexities, tell our history, and map our future.

— Julia Álvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

George Yudice

There is nothing like From Bomba to Hip-Hop at present-certainly no other book that combines in-depth experience with the culture, the sophistication of the author's theoretical foundations, and the eloquence of his style.

Doris Sommer

From Bomba to Hip-Hop shows a probing scholar with his hand firmly but gently on the pulse of cultural formations that would have eluded most of the rest of us. Who else but Juan Flores explores the complexities of Latino life with both sociological depth and a keen ear for popular musical cadences and literary innovation?

— Doris Sommer, Harvard University

George Yúdice

There is nothing like From Bomba to Hip-Hop at present -- certainly no other book that combines in-depth experience with the culture, the sophistication of the author's theoretical foundations, and the eloquence of his style.

— George Yúdice, New York University

Julia Alvarez

From the Author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

[A] deftly written study of Puerto Rican culture and Latino identity. [This book] help define our complexities, tell our history, and map our future.

Editorial Reviews

In his eloquent essay collection... Flores has compiled a decade of research and meditations on 'America's fastest-growing minority,' Latinos.

Suzy Hansen

The latest work by Juan Flores, the most prominent thinker on the most current topics debated in Latino studies....indispensable.

Journal of American History - Zaragosa Vargas

Flores's invaluable book establishes a new parameter for the field of Latino/a studies. Poignant and full of moving accounts, this volume does an inestimable service to both scholars and general readers.

Choice

Well written and informative. Anyone wanting insight into Puerto Rican history and culture will find it enlightening. The book also offers solid supplemental reading for graduate or advanced undergraduate students in music history, Puerto Rican history, cultural studies, and sociology classes.

Hispanic Outlook

The latest work by Juan Flores, the most prominent thinker on the most current topics debated in Latino studies....indispensable.

— Zaragosa Vargas

Journal of American History

In his eloquent essay collection... Flores has compiled a decade of research and meditations on 'America's fastest-growing minority,' Latinos.

— Suzy Hansen

New York Times Book Review

There is nothing like From Bomba to Hip-Hop at present -certainly no other book that combines in-depth experience with the culture, the sophistication of the author´s theoretical foundations, and the eloquence of his style.

George Yudice

From Bomba to Hip-Hop shows a probing scholar with his hand firmly but gently on the pulse of cultural formations that would have eluded most of the rest of us. Who else but Juan Flores explores the complexities of Latino life with both sociological depth and a keen ear for popular musical cadences and literary innovation?

Doris Sommer

As our music becomes popular, our books become classroom texts, our foods deck the covers of magazines, and we are lauded as the new spice of American culture -or alternatively feared as its new invaders -we become lumped together as Latinos and Hispanics: the new millennial minority. All the more need for a book like Juan Flores´s From Bomba to Hip-Hop, an encyclopedic and yet deftly written study of Puerto Rican culture and Latino identity. . . . [This book] helps define our complexities, tell our history, and map our future.

Julia Alvarez

A provocative and nuanced analysis of some of the most challenging conceptual issues in the fields of Puerto Rican, Latino-Latin American, and cultural studies. . . . [an] extremely sophisticated book.

Arlene Davila

Flores (black and Puerto Rican studies, Hunter Coll.; sociology, CUNY Graduate Ctr.) has written widely on Latino and Puerto Rican culture. In this new book, he focuses on the progression of Puerto Rican culture in the United States over the past half-century. He analyzes developments in music, literature, and other elements of popular culture and compares Puerto Rican culture to that of other Latino groups in the United States. He follows some interesting trends, such as the building of casitas, shacks modeled after the traditional rural homes in Puerto Rico, as cultural centers in urban U.S. settings. Flores also discusses aspects of Puerto Rican musical influence, including the Latin Boogaloo craze of 1966-68. He celebrates Puerto Rican cultural accomplishments while encouraging further achievement. While academic in format and tone, Flores's writing is accessible to the interested lay reader. For academic libraries or public libraries with a special interest in the subject.--Gwen M. Gregory, New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

In his eloquent essay collection, From Bomba to Hip-Hop, Juan Flores has compiled a decade of research and meditations on ''America's fastest-growing minority,'' Latinos...most of the essays are colorful and engaging...
—The New York Times Book Review

Hansen