Puerto Rico Is in the Heart: Emigration, Labor, and Politics in the Life and Work of Frank Espada

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 1-24

3. Beloved and Reviled

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 25-38

4. “We came to this country broke.”

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 39-53

5. “[N]ot good enough”

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 54-72

6. Organizing: “[A] question of survival”

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 73-98

7. Conclusion: The Return

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 99-108

8. Postscript: “Without love…”

   • Edward J. Carvalho

   Pages 109-112

9. Back Matter

   Pages 113-136

   PDF

Set against the backdrop of contemporary US economic history, Puerto Rico Is in the Heart examines the emigration, labor, and political experiences of documentary photographer, human rights activist, and Puerto Rican community leader Frank Espada and considers the cultural impact of neoliberal programs directed at Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.

• document
• migration
• politics

"Edward J. Carvalho has written a brilliant, impassioned book that situates the Puerto Rican diaspora within a re-conceived history of neoliberalism told through the life and work of Frank Espada, the famed documentary photographer and civil rights activist. Puerto Rico Is in the Heart breaks new ground, not only in its commitment to exposing the racial and colonial influences on the very formation of neoliberal rationality, but in exploring, in rigorous detail, the interrelated realms of cultural politics, pedagogy and predatory capitalism. A work of gravity and grace that deserves the widest possible audience." - Susan Searls Giroux, McMaster University, Canada

"Richly textured and deeply insightful, Edward J. Carvalho's Puerto Rico Is in the Heart embodies not only a sensitive portrayal of Frank Espada, the human being, and an astute assessment of the aesthetic principles which have guided the trajectory of Espada's photography, but also an overarching sociohistorical contextualization both of the man and of his work. Along the way, Carvalho offers a substantial contribution to our understanding of the origins and evolution of the ugly phenomenon known as neoliberalism. Suffice to say that this is an important book." - Ward Churchill, author of Acts of Rebellion and Perversions of Justice

"The lucid, engaging narrative of Puerto Rico Is in the Heart presents inimitable primary research about Frank Espada, often with suggestive insight from his son, the poet Martín Espada. Edward J. Carvalho's archival research and exclusive interviews are invaluable additions to cultural histories of Puerto Rican migrations and 1960s political movements. More broadly, his historical reassessment of Operation Bootstrap as the first neoliberal state experiment is a provocative critical intervention that wisely locates the imperial roots of the neoliberal project in mid-twentieth-century Puerto Rico." - Michael Dowdy, Assistant Professor, Hunter College of the City University of New York, USA

Edward J. Carvalho is Assistant Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is co-editor of Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era, guest editor for the Works and Days special journal issue Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University (2008-2009), and author of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (2007).

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