Understanding the Complex History and Cultural Diversity of Puerto Rico: A Reading List

The following reading list showcases a fraction of books that have been published by UNC Press over many decades regarding Puerto Rico’s multilayered, complicated history and status as a US territory, as well as its rich, diverse cultural heritage—on La isla del encanto, and on the US mainland.

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Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico’s Independence
By Lisa G. Materson

“Materson’s discussion of Reynolds’s life helps us understand the complexities of solidarity activism as well as the ways that Puerto Ricans and their allies have fought for liberation from colonial rule. Well written and engaging, the book stands to make a major contribution to the field.”— Marisol LeBrón, author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico
By Mónica A. Jiménez

“Jiménez presents an insightful legal analysis of Puerto Rico and how the U.S. government treats it. . . . Both scholars and general readers interested in learning more about Puerto Rico’s past and recent history will appreciate this work.”—Library Journal

Solidarity across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-imperialism
By Margaret M. Power

“By reconceptualizing Puerto Rico’s geopolitical position from a binational relationship between the island and the United States to a hemispheric coalition, Solidarity Across the Americas offers a fresh understanding of the region. . . . The linkages that Power begins to formulate across Latin America deserve further examination by scholars of social movements and transnational solidarities.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

The Young Lords: A Radical History
By Johanna Fernández

“Fernández’s [book] distinguishes itself by providing solid, incredibly detailed historical research. . . . It also places them in the context of the political and social debates that shaped the era and reveals how so much of their activism centered on the same issues—housing, health, education, and the marginalization of women, the LGBTQ community, and the working poor—that we face today.”—The Nation

Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City
By Melissa Fuster

“Combining perspectives from her training in biology, social sciences, food policy, and nutrition, Fuster challenges conventional wisdom that privileges cultural and socioeconomic factors to explain health inequalities . . . [A] remarkably researched book describing alimentary practices for some of the city’s largest Latinx populations.”—Gastronomica

Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity
By Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra | Translated by Russ Davidson

“Ortíz employs an impressive range of sources and has creatively put together a multidisciplinary methodological apparatus to meet the challenge of historicizing symbolic practices such as taste, food preferences, and national belonging. . . . An innovative introduction to the histories of colonialism, struggle, and cultural hybridization that is useful in the classroom and beyond.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898
By César J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe

“A comprehensive historical picture of political developments in the island. . . . By taking the courageous step of restoring economic dependence and its social consequences to the heart of the argument for autonomy—and, in effect, pitting it against more inventive, and often elitist cultural perspectives that range from the neo-nationalist to the post-modern—Puerto Rico in the American Century offers a far more plausible context for understanding the status issue, while offering a far more tolerable, democratic direction for the independence movement in a globalized world.”—Latin American Review of Books