Abstract
In this essay we propose a critical reading of three politically-charged canonic texts of Puerto Rican literature that uphold and vindicate an African heritage for Puerto Rican culture, highlighting their role in moving discussions about blackness at the center stage of debates about national identity and culture, and assessing their contribution to the emergence and development of an Afro-Puerto Rican identity and literature. These texts are: Luis Palés Matos’s Tom-Tom of Kinky Hair and Black Things, José Luis González’s La llegada; and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s Cortijo’s Wake. Moreover, a debate about the racial background of the authors of the three texts will serve to show the existence of a division between Black and White writers within the field of Afro-Puerto Rican literature, and to trace the formation and development of a long tradition of White writers writing about Afro-Puerto Rican topics that extends to the present—belonging to what Doris Sommer has called “negrista appropriations.” The essay culminates with a review of the evolution of Afro-Puerto Rican literature into the twenty-first century, and a discussion of contemporary ideas and debates about the future of Afro-Puerto Rican literature.
Recommended Citation
Galanes, Luis R
"Race and Nation in Three Canonic Texts of Puerto Rican Literature: Luis Palés Matos’s Tom-Tom of Kinky Hair and Black Things, José Luis González’s La llegada, and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s Cortijo’s Wake."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
26.2
(2024):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4584>
This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.
The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 172 times as of 10/01/25.
Included in
American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons