Puerto Rico (United States) / All works
Essay
Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country and Other Essays
El país de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos
José Luis González · 1980
Synopsis
The book brings together seven essays, among them the one that gives it its title, notes towards a definition of Puerto Rican culture. In it the author compares the island's history to a four-storey building: popular culture, African, Taíno and Spanish; the European and South American immigration of the nineteenth century; the American invasion of 1898; the modernisation and populism of the 1940s. He holds popular culture to be the foundation of national identity.
Context
Published in 1980 in San Juan by Ediciones Huracán, the book partly answers the question a student had put to the author in 1979 about North American colonial intervention. It concludes that a democratic socialism is needed to rebuild Puerto Rican society and set off a passionate debate on the island and its cultures. Gerald Guinness translated it into English in 1990 under the title Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country and Other Essays.
Who it is for
For reading an essay that sparked debate on Puerto Rican identity, its classes and its legacies.
Prizes and reception
Carlos M. Gutiérrez notes the criticisms: the portrait of Albizu Campos, the use of the Marxist method, the division of the island into two nations.
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