Overview

"Chicago is home to the third-largest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the United States, but scholarship on the city rarely accounts for their presence. This book is part of an effort to include Puerto Ricans in Chicago's history. Rúa traces Puerto Ricans' construction of identity in a narrative that begins in 1945, when a small group of University of Puerto Rico graduates earned scholarships to attend the University of Chicago and a private employment agency recruited Puerto Rican domestics and foundry workers. They arrived from an island colony where they had held U.S. citizenship and where most thought of themselves as ""white."" But in Chicago, Puerto Ricans were considered ""colored"" and their citizenship was second class. They seemed to share few of the rights other Chicagoans took for granted. In her analysis of the following six decades--during which Chicago witnessed urban renewal, loss of neighborhoods, emergence of multiracial coalitions, waves of protest movements, and everyday commemorations of death and life--Rúa explores the ways in which Puerto Ricans have negotiated their identity as Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and U.S. citizens.Through a variety of sources, including oral history interviews, ethnographic observation, archival research, and textual criticism, A Grounded Identidad attempts to redress this oversight of traditional scholarship on Chicago by presenting not only Puerto Ricans' reconstitution from colonial subjects to second-class citizens, but also by examining the implications of this political reality on the ways in which Puerto Ricans have been racially imagined and positioned in comparison to blacks, whites, and Mexicans over time."

Full Product Details

Author:   Mérida M. Rùa (Assistant Professor, Latina/o Studies and American Studies, Assistant Professor, Latina/o Studies and American Studies, Williams College) ,  Merida M Rua
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 22.40cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 14.70cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9780199760268

ISBN 10:   0199760268
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   13 September 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments Prologue: Field Trips and Field Notes: Reflections on Memory and Neighborhoods 1. A Female Network of Domestics, Student Allies, and Social Workers 2. ""Non-Resident Persons"": Navigating the Limitations of US Citizenship 3. Neighborhood Obituaries, Resilient Communities 4. Tangled Relations of Identidad 5. ""Nobody dies on the eve of their last day"": Rites of Passage and Personhood 6. Communities of Reciprocal Knowledge: Home Work, Fieldwork: Research and Accountability Essay on Methodology and Sources Appendix A: Consent form Appendix B: Formulario de consentimiento Appendix C: Preliminary Questions to Ask in Formal and Informal Interviews Appendix D: Preguntas preliminares que hacer en entrevistas formales y en entrevistas informales Notes Bibliography Index"

Reviews

Merida Rua's Grounded Identidad is a stellar work of interdisciplinary research that thoughtfully documents the lives of early Puerto Rican migrants to Chicago, the the 1950s through the present. Developing her thesis through a rare combination of archival research, life histories, and authorial self-reflection, Rua is develops an ethno-history of Puerto Rican Chicago that is beautifully written and intellectually rigorous. Merida Rua's Grounded Identidad should be required reading in undergraduate and graduate courses in interdisciplinary programs. --Centro Journal Rua's beautifully crafter rendering of the ongoing Puerto Rican struggle to create un pedacito de la patria (a piece of the motherland) in Chicago fills a gaping hole in documenting the first wave of Puerto Rican migrants known as los pioneros (pioneers). The recurring themes of loss, displacement, discrimination, hope, and transformation are captured in the memories and reflections recalled by Rua's interlocutors and informants to construct a nuanced narrative chronicling the social issues that continue to persist in Puerto Rican Chicago. Rua masterfully weaves the multiple threads of individual voices and personal experiences through the fabric of macro level social issues including second-class citizenship status, a legacy of displacement, and the limiting effects of racialized identities. --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society Part history, part ethnography, part memoir, and part methodological rumination, A Grounded Identidad is a marvelous achievement. Drawing on the voices of ordinary people at every turn, Merida Rua offers a beautifully written, deeply researched, and moving account of the making and remaking of Puerto Rican Chicago. --Thomas A. Guglielmo, George Washington University An elegant and moving narrative of memory, loss, triumph and place-making by Puerto Ricans, as well as other Latinas/os in Chicago from the late 1940s to the present. Th

<br> Part history, part ethnography, part memoir, and part methodological rumination, A Grounded Identidad is a marvelous achievement. Drawing on the voices of ordinary people at every turn, M rida R a offers a beautifully written, deeply researched, and moving account of the making and remaking of Puerto Rican Chicago. --Thomas A. Guglielmo, George Washington University<p><br> An elegant and moving narrative of memory, loss, triumph and place-making by Puerto Ricans, as well as other Latinas/os in Chicago from the late 1940s to the present. This interdisciplinary book makes innovative and important scholarly contributions in a way that will be accessible to scholars and community members alike. Responsible, reciprocal, and well-researched. --Gina Perez, Associate Professor of Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College<p><br>

an important contribution to existing studies on Puerto Rican immigration. Delia Fernandez, Journal of American Studies

Author Information

Mérida M. Rúa is Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies and American Studies at Williams College.

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