Publications

Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture & the Fictions of Independence, upcoming in 2014 in the Latinidad series of Rutgers University Press. It is also featured in the American Literatures Initiative sponsored by NYU, Fordham, Temple and Virginia University Presses. The series has funding from the Mellon Foundation. Dream Nation examines how independence, which failed as a political movement, impacts Puerto Rican culture and the meaning of Puerto Ricanness.

It is an accessibly-written, wide-ranging study of how Puerto Rican independence has contributed significant stories, heroes and symbols to Puerto Rican culture as well as becoming a defining element of Puerto Ricanness for Latinos. Dream Nation explores how a tightly-knit community of culture producers encouraged expansive themes of independence while failing to discuss or represent the status options actually chosen by the voters: commonwealth and statehood.

The book takes a dual path: the cultural expression and yearning for national sovereignty is counterbalanced with the economic and political dependency on the U.S. chosen by the voters on the island and by their brethren in the States.

Articles:

“Esmeralda Santiago in the Marketplace of Identity Politics.” Centro Journal, vol. xviii, no. 001, (Spring 2006): 170-187.

“El regreso al Caribe de Severo Sarduy.” Hispanófila. 113, no. 2 (Enero 1995): 69-80.

“Historia y escritura femenina en Olga Nolla, Magali García Ramis, Rosario Ferré y Ana Lydia Vega.”Revista Iberoamericana, vol. LIX, nos. 162-63 (Enero-Junio 1993): 265-77.

“Para que no sean adversarios. Una lectura feminista de Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá.” Confluencia Revista de Literatura Hispánica, vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall Issue 1991): 43-53.

“Severo Sarduy y el juego contrareferencial de aporías.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Puerto Rico (1990-91): 291-300.

“Historia, ser e identidad femenina en ‘Maldito amor’ y ‘el collar de camándulas’ de Rosario Ferre.”Chasqui Revista de Literatura Latinoamerican, vol. 19, no. 2 (November 1990): 23-31.