Puerto Rican Identity Essay

Who am I? Like many Puerto Ricans before me, I have questioned my cultural identity. We claim to be a commonwealth, a free associated state, but we are neither free nor a state. This is where our dilemma lies. What are we if not a state? What are we if not free? We are stuck in the middle, we have become a paradox, a contradiction. Now the question here lies: what- or better yet- who are we? I, alongside 5.1 million other Puerto Ricans, live on the mainland. This is our reality. We are a nation

The turbulent relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico is reflected in some shape or form in the literature of Puerto Rican and neorriqueño authors. In writings it is a relationship of systematic oppression and racial and class discrimination, not only between Puerto Rican Americans but all Latino Americans as they moved north searching for the “American Dream” only to find that it is nothing but mere fantasy. Neorriqueño poets such as Tato Laviera, Julia de Burgos, Pedro Pietri, and

The Identity of a Puerto Rican Sidney W. Mintz describes the Caribbean as "a scattering of some fifty inhabited units spanning nearly 2, 500 miles of sea between Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the north coast of South America, constitute the oldest colonial sphere of Western European overseas expansion... these territories were dominated and navigated and explored, their aborigines had been thrust into the consciousness of European monarchs, philosophers, and scientists" (17). The islands in the

The Identity of an American Puerto Rican Am I "American" or "Puerto Rican", a question that wanders along the halls of my mind all the time? Many Puerto Ricans might not agree, but I feel that I am, "American", Puerto Rican American that is. As a child my own parents deprived me of my culture and true identity. They spoke to me in a language that many Puerto Ricans refused or detested to learn, English. The only thing I can actually say that I know about Puerto Rican heritage is the comida

The Effect of Politics and Race on Identity of Puerto Ricans As is present in many articles we read about Spanish rule and American rule, there were always references to race, and the mix of races that the Puerto Ricans are, and how that has affected their identity. Kristen Moran hypothesized as to what was the origin of Spaniard's need to assert their clean lineage: "The attitude of the Spaniards concerning pure lineage, which can be traced back to the Muslim occupation of Spain, further complicated

Spanish Language's Influence on the Puerto Rican Identity The initial occupation of Puerto Rico by the Spaniards carries an important implication for language as part of the Puerto Rican identity. The Spanish language was imposed upon the inhabitants of the island, the Tainos, in the sixteenth century, when the Spanish inhabited the island in 1502, after the Spanish conquerors claimed the island in the name of Spain in 1493. Eventually, the Spanish had moved out or taken over the ways of the

Puerto Rican Identity and Spanish Colonial Rule The debate on Puerto Rican Identity is a hot bed of controversy, especially in today’s society where American colonialism dominates most of the island’s governmental and economic policies. The country wrestles with the strong influence of its present day colonizers, while it adamantly tries to retain aspects of the legacy of Spanish colonialism. Despite America’s presence, Puerto Ricans maintain what is arguably their own cultural identity which

of the most striking observations I examined was the way in which culture was used to beautify and extol ethnic heritage during my first visit to downtown Holyoke. I witnessed culture functioning as an emblematic tool that was memorializing the Puerto Rican community through art murals, blaring salsa music [which dominated the air-resonance] and other manifestations that showcased Boricua ethos. Those same cultural cues remained during my second trip, but as I engaged more intimately with the residents

clashes and problems influence their relationship with their parents and their ethnic identities as a whole and how they were dealt with differently as we look at two stories dealing with two girls who are both coming of age in different society from where they originally came from. Jairy’s Jargon a story written by Carmen-Gloria Ballista, is a story that encounters the life of a young girl coming of age in Puerto Rico, except she’s originally from New York. Milly Cepeda’s story, Mari y Lissy, is a

Identity is at the core of Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets, Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, and Rhina Espiallat’s Where Horizons Go. All of these Diasporic literary works deals with the manner in which the characters negotiate their relationships between their current locations and their ancestral homelands. In each work the protagonists struggle to unionize there two parts of his/her identity, to bring together the ‘here’ (where they are now) and ‘there’ (their ancestral homeland)