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New Book Explores Origins of Puerto Rican Community in Philadelphia
Before what some scholars refer to as the second wave of Puerto Rican migration; i.e. the so-called Great Migration that began after World War II; there was the first wave of the pioneering migrants who first settled in the United States. The early diaspora would later be joined by thousands of Puerto Ricans. The influx of migrants would then be converted into sizable diasporic communities in...
Juan Flores’s Salsa: A Never Ending Conversation
Imagine you are at the Tritons, “a very modest, small-scale social club” of the Bronx, October 1958, and “some piercing flute sounds [you] to a room” where Charlie Palmieri met Johnny Pacheco a few years before la pachanga became the new trend, the new New York sound, that in less than a decade will conquer markets around the world branded as salsa. To those specific locations of New York Latin...
A Promise Fulfilled: A Conversation with Virginia Sanchez-Korrol, Historian and Author of "A Surprise for Teresita / Una Sorpresa Para Teresita"
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Virginia Sanchez-Korrol about her new picture book published by Arte Público Press, A Surprise for Teresita / Una sorpresa para Teresita (2016). The book centers on the story of a little girl and her family, experiencing the everyday joys of life in a Puerto Rican diaspora neighborhood. Sanchez Korrol, a renowned historian, told me why she wrote the...
A Review of Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education
Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education is the memoir of a diasporican scholar who is one of our most respected and beloved teacher/educators in public education. Sonia Nieto’s memoir is also unusual because much of it draws on a personal diary she kept over the course of her life. Thus, the memoir is remarkably detailed in terms of names of people she was with and activities she engaged in...
Film Review: Memories of a Penitent Heart
Sometimes, bochinche is harmless. People talk trash, others listen and think nothing of it. End of story. But in other cases, bochinche is like a loose thread, one which director Cecilia Aldarondo began to pull, in earnest, more than four years ago. The result, a documentary entitled Memories of a Penitent Heart , provides an autobiographical look at her process of delving into her family’s...
Student Soldiers: Puerto Rican Youth in High School Military Programs
Last year (2015), I attended the American Historical Association Convention in New York City. Their welcoming package included a report on “ The Role of Military History in the Contemporary Academy ” (Biddle and Citino 2015). The report stated what has been painfully obvious for those of us who study the military in any of its many forms. “The phrase military history still stirs conflicted...
Rethinking the Young Lords: New Book on the Legendary Organization
When the Young Lords Organization emerged in Chicago, first as a local street gang in the 1950s, to their evolution into a critical community based collective in the 1960s, they situated themselves as a collective challenging the growing discontent and socio and political disparities limiting the opportunities available to Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Improving the living conditions of Puerto...
Writing the Biography of Ismael Rivera among Mythologies and Archives
Among the pantheon of transformational musicians in the Caribbean is Ismael Rivera: the front man for El Combo de Cortijo, with whom he earned the moniker "el sonero mayor" in honor of his prowess as an improviser. Rivera is synonymous with bringing the Afro-Boricua musical form of bomba onto Puerto Rico's main performance spaces and most popular radio and television programs and using it as a...
Failed Migrant Dreams: The Unknown Story of Operation Airlift
Eileen Findlay’s newest book We Are Left Without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico tells a tale few know but that may resonate with many. In its simplest form, hers is a book about a father sending his children off to make a living and to provide for their own families. Except that in this rendition, the story goes all wrong and the stakes are much...
A History of Puerto Rican/Black Coalitions in New York City
In the middle decades of the twentieth century, New York City’s Black and Latino population increased dramatically. Thousands of Blacks fled from poverty in the Deep South and tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans sought job opportunities as economic restructuring and rural displacement in Puerto Rico generated massive structural unemployment. The newcomers found jobs predominantly in light industry...

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