Boricua Pop - Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (Hardcover, New)

"A perspicacious new book and one of the most intellectually exciting works of recent years, "Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of American Culture" gives new meaning to the idea of the >>pleasure of the text.QBR"

"Provocative and broad-ranging . . . This eclectic, always interesting work will be certain to elicit discussion among faculty and students of ethnic studies, US popular culture, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies."--"Choice"

"Mixing the down and dirty with high culture to come up with good look at the transculture effects of it all."
--"San Juan Star"

aa groundbreaking piece of work on the persistence of colonialism-irreverent, tragicomical, and bittersweet.a
--New West Indian Guide

"Important, timely, and innovative, "Boricua Pop" is a stellar addition to a body of work that grows in importance over time. Negron-Muntaner's book is eagerly anticipated."
--Jose Quiroga, author of "Tropics of Desire"

aSuch an analysis uncovers the transcultural origins of all U.S. cultural production, hopefully provoking additional work that reconsiders and articulates these genealogies.a--"FIlm Quarterly"

""Boricua Pop"" is a foundational text in American, Latino/a, Queer, Performance, and Cultural Studies."
--Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, Mount Holyoke College

Boricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negron-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical "West Side Story" to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicleSeva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferre to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negron-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinating blend of low life and high culture: a highly original, challenging, and lucid new work by one of our most talented cultural critics.