The “Puerto Rican Problem” in Postwar New York Cityby Edgardo Meléndez, will be published by Rutgers University Press in November 2022.
Description: The “Puerto Rican Problem” in Postwar New York City presents the first comprehensive examination of the emergence, evolution, and consequences of the “Puerto Rican Problem” campaign and narrative in New York City from 1945 to 1960. The notion began in an intense public campaign that arose in response to Puerto Rican entry migrants to the city after 1945. The “problem” narrative influenced their inclusion in New York City and other regions of the United States where they settled. The anti-Puerto Rican campaign led to the formulation of public policies by the governments of Puerto Rico and New York City that sought to facilitate their inclusion in the city. Notions internal to this narrative later entered American academia (such as the “culture of poverty”) and American popular culture (e.g. West Side Story), which reproduced many of the stereotypes associated with Puerto Ricans at the time and shaped the way in which Puerto Ricans were studied and perceived by Americans.
Ratings:
“Finely researched and politically astute, Edgardo Meléndez illuminates how the American mainstream press, government agencies, academia, and public opinion misrepresented the Puerto Rican exodus after 1945. A highly readable, detailed, and thought-provoking analysis.” – Jorge Duany (author of Puerto Rico: What Everyone Should Know)
“The first in-depth study of the origins, entrenched biases, and stereotypes of the discourses of the ‘Puerto Rican problem’ pervaded much of the early post-World War II mass migration research about the Puerto Rican community.” An outstanding and indispensable addition to studies of Puerto Rican migration.” –Edna Acosta-Belén (Distinguished Professor Emerita, University at Albany, SUNY)
EDGARDO MELENDEZ is a professor emeritus from the political science department at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras and the Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino studies department at Hunter College. His latest books are Patria: Puerto Rican Expatriates in Late Nineteenth-Century New York CityAND Sponsored Migration: The State and Postwar Puerto Rican Migration to the United States.
For more information, see https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/bucknell/the-puerto-rican-problem-in-postwar-new-york-city/9781978831469
