Puerto Rican Literature

What constitutes “Puerto Rican literature”? This question is as literary as it is political, to a greater degree than it would be when considering the canon of a sovereign nation. Two reasons may be given to account for this exceptionality: (1) Puerto Rico has been the colony of two successive empires, Spain and the United States, and (2) more than half its people live in the United States, as part of a diaspora shaped sometimes by choice and, more often, by colonial (political, economic) pressures. Scholars interested in the literature of this Puerto Rican majority, which is the diaspora in the United States, should consult Edna Acosta-Belén’s entry in Oxford Bibliographies, as the present entry limits itself to criticism about literature in Spanish that has predominantly circulated within the confines of the island(s) of Puerto Rico. In fact, this geographic and linguistic split (mainland is to island, as English is to Spanish) had conditioned scholarly approaches to Puerto Rican literature throughout most of the 20th century and only began to be questioned in the 1980s by daring scholars such as Acosta-Belén herself. Moreover, this linguistic, geographic, and political split between English and Spanish reflects one of Puerto Rican literature’s most persistent topics: the call for independence from the United States, a feature that sets Puerto Rican literature apart from other literatures in Spanish. More broadly, from the 19th century onward, Puerto Rican authors have been concerned with the question of national identity within a colonial context. Only after the 1970s does this question cease to be the guiding concern of Puerto Rican authors, a rupture (and a new beginning) driven by the voices of women, queer, and Afro-Puerto Rican authors, who continue to insist on the expansion of the literary canon. While the question of national identity still exists, many contemporary authors refuse to join in this totalizing search, and prefer to write about spaces, characters, and situations that have been traditionally marginalized by the heteropatriarchal, Hispanophile literary establishment.

Benigno Trigo. Malady and Genius: Self-Sacrifice in Puerto Rican Literature.

Benigno Trigo. Malady and Genius: Self-Sacrifice in Puerto Rican Literature.

Una revisión histórico-política de la producción literaria puertorriqueña. Entrevista con Fernando Feliú Matilla / A historical and political review of Puertorriquean Literatura. Interview to Fernando Feliú Matilla

Resumen: A lo largo de la siguiente entrevista, el profesor, historiador, crítico e investigador la de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, el catedrático en literatura puertorriqueña don Fernando Feliú Matilla, nos permite establecer una visión histórica de la génesis artística llevada a cabo en la Isla a través de los diferentes contextos socio-políticos que han tenido lugar en la misma desde la aparición de una literatura puertorriqueña propia y distintiva hasta la anexión de Puerto Rico a los Estados Unidos de América como Estado Libre Asociado en 1952 y su impronta en la génesis isleña. Si bien la entrevista tiene como objeto principal la literatura boricua, también se debaten en la misma el falocentrismo cultural presente en la cultura puertorriqueña, las relaciones políticas entre San Juan y Washington D.C., la influencia de los textos diaspóricos en la producción isleña o la situación del panorama artístico actual en Puerto Rico.Palabras clave: Literatura hispanoamericana; Literatura puertorriqueña; Estados Unidos; emigración; política. Abstract: Throughtout the following interview, professor Fernando Feliú Matilla, who holds a chair in Puerto Rican Studies and Literature, offers his personal point of view after years of research about Puerto Rican literature written in the 20th century. The interview is developed from a historical perspective, which means that it starts right from the moment Puerto Rico was still a Spanish colony in the Americas, until the present day, being Puerto Rico a Free Associated State of the United States of America (also known as American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico). Besides the literature, professor Feliú Matilla also gives his opinion about the absence of female writers in Puerto Rican literature, the relationships between San Juan and Washington D.C., the cultural movements that Puerto Rican literature written nowadays is influenced by, and many other different topics such as Caribbean literature written in the United States and its connection with Puerto Rican art.Keywords: Hispanic Literature; Puerto Rican Literature; USA; immigration; politics.