Bridging the Caribbean: Puerto Rican Roots in Nineteenth Century America
For general background on Hispanic immigration from the Caribbean and Central America to the United States, try these books:
Duignan, Peter, and L. H. Gann. The Spanish Speakers In The United States (Lanham: University Press of America, c1998).
González, Juan. Harvest Of Empire: A History Of Latinos In America (New York: Viking, 2000).
Gutierrez, David G., ed,The Columbia History Of Latinos In The United States Since 1960 (New York:Columbia University Press, c2004).
Olmos, Margarite Fernández and Augenbraum, Harold, eds., The Latino Reader: An American Literary Tradition From 1542 To The Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
Ruiz, Vicki L., and Korrol, Virginia Sànchez, eds., Latina Legacies: Identity,
Biography and Community (Oxford University Press, 2005).
For more information on the “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage” initiative, go to their website::
http://www.arte.uh.edu/recovery/index.aspx
You may find these “notes” on Vega’s Memoirs by Rolando Romero of the University of Illinois useful:
http://www.sip.uiuc.edu/rromero/notes/vega.htm
The story of Cuban-American cigar workers in the United States has been the subject of considerable media attention. First there was this television production now available on video:
Living In America: One Hundred Years Of Ybor City. Producer/ Director: Gayle Jamison. New York, NY Filmakers Library, 1987.
More recently, Nilo Cruz, a young Cuban-American playwright, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Anna in the Tropics, a drama about Cuban cigar-factory workers and the lector or “reader” in their Florida factory in 1930. The Pulitzer Prize website gives a summary of the play’s plot and a brief biography of its author, and the website of the New Theatre, the first company to produce the play, provides additional information:
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2003/drama/
http://www.new-theatre.org/pulitzer.htm
A printed edition of the play is available in either English or Spanish from the New York Theatre Communications/ Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (http://www.cbsd.com/). The Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C., prepared this useful website suggesting ways to use the play in the classroom:
http://www.arenastage.org/community/education/ project_enrichment/archive_files/2004_05/cc_anna_tropics.pdf
For additional material on Hispanic Americans in the Civil War, you can use the online text of The Woman In Battle: A Narrative Of The Exploits, Adventures, And Travels Of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known As Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army (Richmond: Dustin, Gilman & Co., 1876) at:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/velazquez/menu.html
For a brief biography of Velazquez and links to other websites about her, see the online chapter of a text from Clara E. Rodriguez’s “Puerto Ricans: Immigrants and Migrants” in the "Americans All" website:
http://www.americansall.com/PDFs/02-americans-all/9.9.pdf
This resource provides links to Jose Martí pages on the Web:
http://members.aol.com/josemarticuba/index1.html
For good background in all aspects of Puerto Rican history and culture, go to the El Boricua website, and make sure to check out the lesson plans:
http://www.elboricua.com/
Finally, here are a few printed resources in addition to those listed by Professor Sánchez Korrol:
Pérez y González, Maria E. Puerto Ricans in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000).
The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History. Edited by Kal Wagenheim and Olga Jiménez de Wagenheim (Princeton: M. Wiener Publishers, c1994).
Cordasco, Francesco. The Puerto Ricans, 1493-1973; A Chronology & Fact Book. (Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.: Oceana Publications, 1973).
Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. Boricua Pop Puerto Ricans And The Latinization Of American Culture (New York: New York University Press, c2004).
