The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and Mark Twain House & Museum present an Author Talk & Book Signing with Maria Acosta Cruz, author of Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence, (Rutgers University Press, 2014), on September 23 at 7 PM at the Stowe Center. Buy the book at the Stowe Museum Store and save 10% (15% savings for Stowe Center members).
Over the past fifty years, Puerto Rican voters have rejected calls for national independence. Yet the rhetoric and iconography of independence have been defining features of Puerto Rican literature and culture.
Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served competing purposes. They have given authority to the island's literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture.
In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island's people.
About the Author
Maria Acosta Cruz is an associate professor of Spanish at Clark University. Her work has appeared in the journals Hispanófila, Revista Iberoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Chasqui Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana.
Born and raised in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Cruz received a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1980 and 1984, respectively. Her main research interests are Caribbean and Latino cultures. She explores issues such as the making and marketability of identities, Puerto Rican cultural history, and national and gender-based stereotypes.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, a museum, program center and research library, is located at 77 Forest Street in Hartford, CT. The Stowe Center is open year round for tours and programs. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center uses Stowe's story to inspire commitment to social justice and positive change.