In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged an unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States. Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens.

Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism.

Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, "War Against All Puerto Ricans" tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.

War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

When I Was Puerto Rican

A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico's 122 years as a colony of the US.

Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew impossible to ignore in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane María, as the physical destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt crisis. In "Fantasy Island", Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.

Taking readers from San Juan to New York City and back to his family's home in the Luquillo Mountains, Morales shows us the machinations of financial and political interests in both the US and Puerto Rico, and the resistance efforts of Puerto Rican artists and activists. Through it all, he emphasizes that the only way to stop Puerto Rico from being bled is to let Puerto Ricans take control of their own destiny, going beyond the statehood-commonwealth-independence debate to complete decolonization.


Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico

"The House on the Lagoon" is the story of Isabel Monfort and her husband Quintin Mendizabal--the history of a family whose secrets, conflicts and private mythologies add up to the larger story of a nation: Puerto Rico.

The House on the Lagoon

"Fearless necessary reporting . . . Klein exposes the 'battle of utopias' that is currently unfolding in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico—a battle that pits a pitilessly neoliberal plutocratic ‘paradise' against a community movement with Puerto Rican sovereignty at its center.” —Junot Díaz"We are in a fight for our lives. Hurricanes Irma and María unmasked the colonialism we face in Puerto Rico, and the inequality it fosters, creating a fierce humanitarian crisis. Now we must find a path forward to equality and sustainability, a path driven by communities, not investors. And this book explains, with careful and unbiased reporting, only the efforts of our community activists can answer the paramount question: What type of society do we want to become and who is Puerto Rico for?" —Yulin Cruz, Mayor of San Juan, Puerto RicoIn the rubble of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and ultrarich “Puertopians” are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. In this vital and startling investigation, bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein uncovers how the forces of shock politics and disaster capitalism seek to undermine the nation's radical, resilient vision for a “just recovery.”
  All royalties from the sale of this book in English and Spanish go directly to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island. 
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of the international bestsellers No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, and No Is Not Enough.

The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists

MANY CULTURES * ONE WORLD
"Boricua is what Puerto Ricans call one another as a term of endearment, respect, and cultural affirmation; it is a timeless declaration that transcends gender and color. Boricua is a powerful word that tells the origin and history of the Puerto Rican people."
--From the Introduction
From the sun-drenched beaches of a beautiful, flamboyan-covered island to the cool, hard pavement of the fierce South Bronx, the remarkable journey of the Puerto Rican people is a rich story full of daring defiance, courageous strength, fierce passions, and dangerous politics--and it is a story that continues to be told today. Long ignored by Anglo literature studies, here are more than fifty selections of poetry, fiction, plays, essays, monologues, screenplays, and speeches from some of the most vibrant and original voices in Puerto Rican literature. 


Contents:

Catharsis. Here by Sandra Maria Esteves
To the Persecuted by José de Diego
The Sounds of Sixth Street by Martita Morales
A Letter to a Child Like Me by José Torres
It Is Raining Today by Sandra Maria Esteves
How to Know the Puerto Ricans by Jesus Colon
Island of Lost Causes by Esmeralda Santiago
Hallelujahs by José de Diego
Puerto Rican Nationalism by Pedro Albizu Campos
On Recent Disturbances in Puerto Rico by Luis Muñoz Marin
The Boy Without a Flag by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.
Grand River of Loiza by Julia de Burgos
The "Lamento Borincano" by José Luis González
The Party (From Palante! Young Lords Party) by Pablo Guzman
Los Macheteros by Ronald Fernandez
Double Allegiance by Rosario Morales
Child of the Americas by Aurora Levins Morales
Ay Ay Ay, of the Kinky Negress by Julia de Burgos
Puerto Ricans: Between Black and White by Clara E. Rodriguez
Nigger-Reecan Blues by Willie Perdomo
Black and Latino by Roberto Santiago
Babylon for the Babylonians (From Down These Mean Streets) by Piri Thomas
African Things by Victor Hernandez Cruz
The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria by Judith Ortiz Cofer
A Mongo Affair by Miguel Algarin
Puerto Rican Obituary by Pedro Pietri
The Konk by Piri Thomas
The Story of My Body by Judith Ortiz Cofer
To Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
Hangin' (Out) with the Homeboys by Joséph B. Vasquez
Niggerlips by Martin Espada
Little Things Are Big by Jesus Colon
The Docile Puerto Rican - Literature and Psychological Reality by René Marqués
The American Invasion of Macun (From When I Was Puerto Rican) by Esmeralda Santiago
Urban reality. Monday Morning by Pedro Pietri
"Looking Good" by Freddie Prinze
Carlito's Way by Edwin Torres
Short Eyes by Miguel Piñero
Poppa Dio! by Reinaldo Povod
Bayaminina by Pedro Juan Soto
Roots (From Palante! Young Lords Party) by Felipe Luciano
I Became My Own Path by Julia de Burgos
Yoruba (From The Santeria Experience) by Migene Gonzalez -Wippler
Aunt Rosana's Rocker by Nicholasa Mohr
Aerobics for Love by Ana Lydia Vega
Malig; Malig &amp; Sal; Sal. (From Dominoes and Other Stories from The Puerto Rican) by Jack Agüeros
My Old Flame by Ed Morales
HIV by Miguel Algarin
Poem for My Death by Julia de Burgos
Dedicated to Maria Rodriguez Martinez - February 24, 1975 by Lucky CienFuegos
The Freddie Prinze Story by Maria Graniela de Pruetzel
A Special Kind of Courage: Bernard Carabello by Geraldo Rivera
Loiza Aldea by Victor Hernandez Cruz
Redemption. The Final Act by José de Diego

Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology

Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know®

A fascinating story of destinies that mingle and cross, of the human capacity to endure, this is a story of impossible love and passion. The novel's main characters, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, and the male members of the Fornaris family, live in Puerto Rico during the 20th century. Mayra Santos-Febres, one of the most intimate voices in Spanish language literature, has created an sensual narrative filled with color and poetry.

Nuestra Señora de la Noche (Our Lady of the Night)

Memoir, coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem by Puerto Rican. Dark-skinned morenito had family who ignored African blood. Consolation from drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery end when Piri 22 goes to Sing Sing prison for shooting a cop. His journey continues to self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence. 30-year anniversary edition has Intro by author.

Down These Mean Streets

FOREWORD BY LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AND LUIS A. MIRANDA, JR.

The true story of how a group of chefs fed hundreds of thousands of hungry Americans after Hurricane Maria and touched the hearts of many more 

Chef José Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. The economy was destroyed and for most people there was no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world.

Andrés addressed the humanitarian crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. From serving sancocho with his friend José Enrique at Enrique’s ravaged restaurant in San Juan to eventually cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people, including with massive paellas made to serve thousands of people alone.. At the same time, they also confronted a crisis with deep roots, as well as the broken and wasteful system that helps keep some of the biggest charities and NGOs in business.

Based on Andrés’s insider’s take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, "We Fed an Island" movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future. 

Beyond that, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Chef Relief Network of World Central Kitchen for efforts in Puerto Rico and beyond.

We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time

“For women readers, this is a romantic international spy novel; for men, it’s an international spy novel with romance – all wrapped up in a true life suspense thriller written with Dan Brown flare.”

First in the SILENT CATS series, JD Wallace's Deadly Dance spins the mind-bending, genre-blurring fictionalized true story based on the life of Kat, the youngest Kidon Katsa Assassin in the history of Mossad, and her husband, Pantera, the fabled Chief Black Site Interrogator, who worked under such special access programs as the Operation Copper Green (created under Donald Rumsfeld), the United Nations Security Council – Special Operations Group (UN-SOG), and Task Forces 88 and 121.

Reaching back to 1989, Kat and Pantera meet in the City of Seven Hills, beautiful Rome, Italy, at a U.S. Embassy New Year’s Eve ball, kicking off their 16-year relationship in the onion-layered world of covert operatives, spy hunters, slave traders, and sovereign-paid intelligence peddlers. Of necessity, their encounters are beset by lies wrapped in half-truths, concealed in shadowy realities. Kat and Pantera maneuver through action-packed covert operations, romantic encounters, torture, and acrobatic combat, all while coming to grips about who they’re hunting and who is hunting them.

Silent Cats: Deadly Dance

Stories from Puerto Rico / Historias de Puerto Rico (English and Spanish Edition)

On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero," a book destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man. Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often defined by statistics. During his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his team to championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in all fourteen World Series games in which he played. His career ended with three-thousand hits, the magical three-thousandth coming in his final at-bat, and he and the immortal Lou Gehrig are the only players to have the five-year waiting period waived so they could be enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their deaths.

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

"Song of the Simple Truth" ("Canci"ó"n de la verdad sencilla) "is the first bilingual edition of Julia de Burgos' complete poems. Numbering more than 200, these poems form a literary landmark—the first time her poems have appeared in a complete edition in either English or Spanish. Many of the verses presented here had been lost and are presented here for the first time in print. De Burgos broke new ground in her poetry by fusing a romantic temperament with keen political insights. This book will be essential reading for lovers of poetry and for feminists.

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos

The people of Puerto Rico today are caught in a centuries-old dilemma of identity.

In this non-partisan text, Arturo Morales Carrión discusses the island's social, institutional, and cultural evolution and provides a historical perspective on all political positions.

Attention to problems related to the Puerto Rican search for identity makes this a book of special interest to Americans and Puerto Ricans alike. "Understanding the island," says the author, "involves transcending the confines of American nationalism in an effort at empathy and insight. Only through mutual understanding and respect will the United States and Puerto Rico face with hope and creativity the many baffling and thorny issues of the present."

Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History

"Worker in the Cane" is both a profound social document and a moving spiritual testimony. Don Taso portrays his harsh childhood, his courtship and early marriage, his grim struggle to provide for his family. He tells of his radical political beliefs and union activity during the Depression and describes his hardships when he was blacklisted because of his outspoken convictions. Embittered by his continuing poverty and by a serious illness, he undergoes a dramatic cure and becomes converted to a Protestant revivalist sect. In the concluding chapters the author interprets Don Taso's experience in the light of the changing patterns of life in rural Puerto Rico.

Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History

A novel of love and loss set against the rapidly-changing backdrop of 1950s Puerto RicoJuan Martnez Cap called it a novel that is a joyful chronicle of Puerto Rican solidarity, and Efran Barradas stated that its combination of traditional mythical structure and contemporary realism gives Garca Ramis' novel a very special appeal, a present-day ambiguity.

Happy Days, Uncle Sergio

Puerto Rico, Borinquen Querida

The Signe family is blessed with two daughters. Consuelo, the elder, is thought of as pensive and book-loving, the serious child-la niña seria-while Mili, her younger sister, is seen as vivacious, a ray of tropical sunshine. Two daughters: one dark, one light; one to offer comfort and consolation, the other to charm and delight. But, for all the joy both girls should bring, something is not right in this Puerto Rican family; a tragedia is developing, like a tumor, at its core.

In this fierce, funny, and sometimes startling novel, we follow a young woman's quest to negotiate her own terms of survival within the confines of her culture and her family.

magazine

"Judith Ortiz Cofer has created a character who takes us by the hand on a journey of self-discovery. She reminds readers young and old never to forget our own responsibilities, and to enjoy life with all its joys and sorrows."--Bessy Reyna, "MultiCultural Review"

The Meaning of Consuelo

Verdita Ortiz-Santiago has spent 11 long years in her sleepy Puerto Rican mountain town, and she is desperate for change. After all, everything else is changig around her. Mamá has announced that she is pregnant, Papi is spending more time at the jíbaros bar discussing politics and watching the cockfights, and the whole island seems trapped in the struggle to stay linked to the United States or to fight for independence. 
For Verdita, the choice is easy. In the States, her life would be perfect, just like Dick and Jane’s in her textbooks. She would be free to sing Elvis songs, eat hamburguesas at every meal, and maybe sort out her feelings for her American friend Blake, whose accidental touch made her feel she would burst into flame. 
Like the classics "Annie John" and "The House on Mango Street", "The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico" delves into the conflicting feelings we have for the people we love and the difficulties of leaving one’s homeland for places unknown. "Sarah McCoy" handles Verdita’s struggles with striking insight and lyrical prose.

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico

A young girl growing up in Spanish Harlem in the 1940's watches the secure world of her childhood years slowly erode away. Selected as Outstanding Book of the Year by The New York Times and Best Book of 1973 by the American Library Association.

Nilda

La llamarada

Residents of Vieques, a small island just off the east coast of Puerto Rico, live wedged between an ammunition depot and live bombing range for the U.S. Navy. Since the 1940s when the navy expropriated over two-thirds of the island, residents have struggled to make a life amid the thundering of bombs and rumbling of weaponry fire. Like the armys base in Okinawa, Japan, the facility has drawn vociferous protests from residents who challenged U.S. security interests overseas. In 1999, when a local civilian employee of the base was killed by a stray bomb, Vieques again erupted in protests that have mobilized tens of thousands individuals and transformed this tiny Caribbean Island into the setting for an international cause célèbre.

Katherine T. McCaffrey gives a complete analysis of the troubled relationship between the U.S. Navy and island residents. She explores such topics as the history of U.S. naval involvement in Vieques; a grassroots mobilizationled by fishermenthat began in the 1970s; how the navy promised to improve the lives of the island residentsand failed; and the present-day emergence of a revitalized political activism that has effectively challenged naval hegemony.

The case of Vieques brings to the fore a major concern within U.S. foreign policy that extends well beyond Puerto Rico: military bases overseas act as lightning rods for anti-American sentiment, thus threatening this countrys image and interests abroad. By analyzing this particular, conflicted relationship, the book also explores important lessons about colonialism and postcolonialism and the relationship of the United States to the countries in which it maintains military bases.

Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Available for the first time in English, Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra's magisterial history of the foods and eating habits of Puerto Rico unfolds into an examination of Puerto Rican society from the Spanish conquest to the present. Each chapter is centered on an iconic Puerto Rican foodstuff, from rice and cornmeal to beans, roots, herbs, fish, and meat. Ortiz shows how their production and consumption connects with race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and cultural appropriation in Puerto Rico. 
Using a multidisciplinary approach and a sweeping array of sources, Ortiz asks whether Puerto Ricans really still are what they ate. Whether judging by a host of social and economic factors--or by the foods once eaten that have now disappeared--Ortiz concludes that the nature of daily life in Puerto Rico has experienced a sea change.

Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity

Marcus Vega is six feet tall, 180 pounds, and the owner of a premature mustache. When you look like this and you're only in the eighth grade, you're both a threat and a target. Marcus knows what classmates and teachers see when they look at him: a monster.

But appearances are deceiving. At home, Marcus is a devoted brother. And he finds ways to earn cash to contribute to his family’s rainy day fund. His mom works long hours and his dad walked out ten years ago—someone has to pick up the slack.

After a fight at school leaves him facing suspension, Marcus and his family decide to hit the reset button and regroup for a week in Puerto Rico. Marcus is more interested in finding his father, though, who is somewhere on the island. Through a series of misadventures that take Marcus all over Puerto Rico in search of the elusive Mr. Vega, Marcus meets a colorful cast of characters who show him the many faces of fatherhood. And he even learns a bit of Spanish along the way.

Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish is a novel about discovering home and identity in uncharted landscapes.

Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish

When this award-winning husband-and-wife team discovered that they each had sugar in their family history, they were inspired to trace the globe-spanning story of the sweet substance and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives. The trail ran like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe’s Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar was the substance that drove the bloody slave trade and caused the loss of countless lives but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. With songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Time line, source notes, bibliography, index.

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science

Offering a comprehensive overview of Puerto Rico's history and evolution since the installation of U.S. rule, Cesar Ayala and Rafael Bernabe connect the island's economic, political, cultural, and social past. "Puerto Rico in the American Century" explores Puerto Ricans in the diaspora as well as the island residents, who experience an unusual and daily conundrum: they consider themselves a distinct people but are part of the American political system; they have U.S. citizenship but are not represented in the U.S. Congress; and they live on land that is neither independent nor part of the United States. Highlighting both well-known and forgotten figures from Puerto Rican history, Ayala and Bernabe discuss a wide range of topics, including literary and cultural debates and social and labor struggles that previous histories have neglected. Although the island's political economy remains dependent on the United States, the authors also discuss Puerto Rico's situation in light of world economies. Ayala and Bernabe argue that the inability of Puerto Rico to shake its colonial legacy reveals the limits of free-market capitalism, a break from which would require a renewal of the long tradition of labor and social activism in Puerto Rico in connection with similar currents in the United States.

Puerto Rico in the American Century: a History Since 1898

Puerto Rican girls are brought up to want one thing: true love. Yet they are raised by women whose lives are marked by broken promises, grief, and betrayal. While some believe that they’ll be the ones to finally make it work, others swear not to repeat cycles of violence. This collection documents how these “love wars” break out across generations as individuals find themselves caught in the crosshairs of romance, expectations, and community.

Love War Stories

Puerto Rico may be best known for its spectacular beaches, classic golf courses, and rich Spanish culture, but that's just the tip of the palm tree. "Moon Puerto Rico" provides you with the essential details needed to discover all the can't miss sights, attractions, and restaurants on the island, while including the best lesser-known and local hotspots.
With firsthand experience and honest insight, expert author Suzanne Van Atten provides you with all the tools you need to create your own unique experience. Suzanne's fun and creative travel suggestions can help you plan your perfect trip including, 21-Day Tour of Puerto Rico, Thrillseekers Tour, Beach Bum Tour, Romantic Getaway, and Family Fun.
Explore El Yunque rain forest or the underground caves at Cavernas del Rio Camuy; swim in a glowing bioluminescent bay at night; and dance to the beats of a salsa band in San Juan. From Vieques and Culebra to Cordillera Central and Rincon, "Moon Puerto Rico" gives you the tools for an entirely uncommon, more personal, and ultimately more satisfying travel experience.

Moon Puerto Rico

"Lolita Lebrón's granddaughter, heir to the most public female embodiment of heroic self-sacrifice in Puerto Rico in this century, [has written] a memoir full of searing, intimate truths, silences broken open to reveal the personal costs of public myth making. . . . A momentous act of courage. "
 -- The Women's Review of Books

A shred of black lace. A broken hand mirror. A spidery strip of false eyelash. These are the fragments left to Irene Vilar, granddaughter of Lolita Lebrón, the revered martyr for Puerto Rican independence who in 1954 sprayed the U.S. House of Representatives with gunfire. In The Ladies' Gallery, Vilar revisits the legacy of her grandmother and that of her anguished mother, who leapt from a speeding car when Vilar was eight. Eleven years after her mother's death, Vilar awakens in a psychiatric hospital and begins to face the devastating inheritance of abandonment and suicide passed down to her from grandmother and mother.

Alternating between Vilar's notes from the psychiatric ward and the unraveling of her family's secrets, this razor-sharp memoir of three generations of Puerto Rican women is urgent, impassioned, unforgettable.


"An autobiography as fantastic as any novel. "
--Boston Globe


"Profoundly moving [and] beautifully written." 
--Rosario Ferre, author of The House on the Lagoon

The Ladies' Gallery: A Memoir of Family Secrets

Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson," The Rum Diary" is a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule and anything (including murder) is permissible.

The Rum Diary

In 1968 Miguel “Mickey” Melendez was a college student, developing pride in his Cuban and Puerto Rican cultural identity and becoming increasingly aware of the effects of social inequality on Latino Americans. Joining with other like-minded student activists, Melendez helped form the central committee of the New York branch of the Young Lords, one of the most provocative and misunderstood radical groups to emerge during the 1960s. Incorporating techniques of direct action and community empowerment, the Young Lords became a prominent force in the urban northeast. From their storefront offices in East Harlem, they defiantly took back the streets of El Barrio. In addition to running clothing drives, day-care centers, and food and health programs, they became known for their media-savvy tactics and bold actions, like the takeovers of the First People’s Church and Lincoln Hospital.

In this memoir, Melendez describes with the unsparing eye of an insider the idealism, anger, and vitality of the Lords as they rose to become the most respected and powerful voice of Puerto Rican empowerment in the country. He also traces the internal ideological disputes that led the group, but not the mission, to fracture in 1972. Written with passion and compelling detail, "We Took the Streets" tells the story of how one group took on the establishment—and won.

We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords

1940's play follows a family of Puerto Rican "jíbaros" (rural peasants) that, in an effort to find better opportunities, end up moving to the United States.
The story is divided in three acts, each focusing on a specific location. The first act begins with the family preparing to move from the countryside to San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, in search of a "better life". The second act takes place a year later in the La Perla slum of San Juan, where the family has moved. The final act takes place yet another year apart, in The Bronx, New York, where opportunity turns to tragedy.

La Carreta

Puerto Rico, a Unique Culture: History, People and Traditions

Marisel Vera emerges as a major voice of contemporary fiction with a heart- wrenching novel set in Puerto Rico on the eve of the Spanish-American War.

It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of other puertorriqueños, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii—another US territory—where they are confronted by the hollowness of America’s promises of prosperity. Writing in the tradition of great Latin American storytelling, Marisel Vera’s The Taste of Sugar is an unforgettable novel of love and endurance, and a timeless portrait of the reasons we leave home.

The Taste of Sugar

Set in the 1950s and 1960s, "The Line of the Sun" moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family's struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story's center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer.

The Line of the Sun

It is the winter of 1929, and cousins Hildamar and Santiago have just moved to enormous, chilly New York from their native Puerto Rico. As Three Kings' Day approaches, Hildamar and Santiago mourn the loss of their sunny home and wonder about their future in their adopted city. But when a storyteller and librarian named Pura Belpré arrives in their classroom, the children begin to understand just what a library can mean to a community. In this fitting tribute to a remarkable woman, Lucía González and Lulu Delacre have captured the truly astounding effect that Belpré had on the city of New York.

The Storyteller's Candle/La velita de los cuentos

Enthralled admirers of Esmeralda Santiago's memoirs of her childhood have yearned to read more. Now, in "The Turkish Lover", Esmeralda finally breaks out of the monumental struggle with her powerful mother, only to elope into the spell of an exotic love affair. At the heart of the story is Esmeralda's relationship with "the Turk," a passion that gradually becomes a prison out of which she must emerge to become herself. The expansive humanity, earthy humor, and psychological courage that made Esmeralda's first two books so successful are on full display again in "The Turkish Lover".

The Turkish Lover: A Memoir

A community transplanted from what they now view as an island paradise, these Puerto Rican families yearn for the colors and tastes of their former home. As they carve out lives as Americans, their days are filled with drama, success, and sometimes tragedy. A widow becomes crazy after her son is killed in Vietnam, her remaining word "nada." Another woman carries on after the death of her husband, keeping their store, filled with plantain, Bustello coffee, jamon y queso, open as a refuge for her neighbors. And there are Cofer's stories of growing up with a dictatorial and straying father, a caring mother, and a love for language that will lead to a career as a teacher and writer.

The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

Über drei Generationen hinweg spannen sich Rosario Ferres Geschichten von starken Frauen, großen Leidenschaften und gescheiterten Lieben. Ein poetischer, sensibler und gleichzeitig humorvoller Roman aus dem Herzen der Karibik.

Die Stimmen der Träume

Twelve stories about young people caught between their Puerto Rican heritage and their American surroundings.

An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio

Feminists, socialists, Afro-Puerto Rican activists, and elite politicians join laundresses, prostitutes, and dissatisfied wives in populating the pages of Imposing Decency. Through her analyses of Puerto Rican anti-prostitution campaigns, attempts at reforming marriage, and working-class ideas about free love, Eileen J. Suárez Findlay exposes the race-related double standards of sexual norms and practices in Puerto Rico between 1870 and 1920, the period that witnessed Puerto Rico’s shift from Spanish to U.S. colonialism.

Puerto Rico

War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony

Nelson A. Denis

When I Was Puerto Rican

Esmeralda Santiago

Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico

Ed Morales

The House on the Lagoon

Rosario Ferré

The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists

Naomi Klein

Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology

Roberto Santiago

Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Jorge Duany

Nuestra Señora de la Noche (Our Lady of the Night)

Mayra Santos-Febres

Down These Mean Streets

Piri Thomas

We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time

José Andrés

We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time

José Andrés

Silent Cats: Deadly Dance

J.D. Wallace

Stories from Puerto Rico / Historias de Puerto Rico (English and Spanish Edition)

Robert L. Muckley

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

David Maraniss

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos

Julia de Burgos

Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History

Arturo Morales Carrión

Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History

Sidney W. Mintz

Happy Days, Uncle Sergio

Magali García Ramis

Puerto Rico, Borinquen Querida

Roger A. Labrucherie

The Meaning of Consuelo

Judith Ortiz Cofer

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico

Sarah McCoy

Nilda

Nicholasa Mohr

La llamarada

Enrique A. Laguerre

Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Katherine T. McCaffrey

Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity

Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra

Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish

Pablo Cartaya

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science

Marc Aronson

Puerto Rico in the American Century: a History Since 1898

César J. Ayala

Love War Stories

Ivelisse Rodriguez

Moon Puerto Rico

Suzanne Van Atten

The Ladies' Gallery: A Memoir of Family Secrets

Irene Vilar

The Rum Diary

Hunter S. Thompson

We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords

Miguel Meléndez

La Carreta

René Marqués

Puerto Rico, a Unique Culture: History, People and Traditions

Hilda Iriarte

The Taste of Sugar

Marisel Vera

The Line of the Sun

Judith Ortiz Cofer

The Storyteller's Candle/La velita de los cuentos

Lucia M. Gonzalez

The Turkish Lover: A Memoir

Esmeralda Santiago

The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry