Overview

Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama explores the work of a unique group of playwrights—Puerto Rican dramatists writing in the United States—who offer a model of political engagement. As members of the Puerto Rican diaspora, they have a heightened awareness of the systematic discrimination and the colonial citizenship created by Puerto Rico’s territorial status. Pragmatic Liberation analyzes the work of established playwrights as well as work that has previously received little attention in the world of theater studies, including René Marqués’s Palm Sunday. The book demonstrates the strategies these playwrights use to model a nuanced way of moving toward liberation while being sensitive to the potential impact these actions might have on those closest to us. This is a crucially important model that needs more attention in our currently polarized political moment.

Full Product Details

9780472076727

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Pragmatic Liberation is a timely study that responds to the divisiveness that characterizes contemporary political discourse...Rossini's monograph will speak to scholars in fields ranging from Theatre Studies to English, Spanish, and Ethnic Studies, and it is a particularly welcome contribution to literary studies of the Hispanic Caribbean diaspora because it engages with a genre that has generally been neglected."" -- Comparative Drama ""I recommend the introduction as a teachable essay for an undergraduate course and the monograph as a whole for anyone who wants to understand the intellectual contributions of Puerto Rican diasporic writers to the theorization of revolution, activism, and performance politics."" -- Latin American Theatre Review

""Pragmatic Liberation is a timely study that responds to the divisiveness that characterizes contemporary political discourse...Rossini's monograph will speak to scholars in fields ranging from Theatre Studies to English, Spanish, and Ethnic Studies, and it is a particularly welcome contribution to literary studies of the Hispanic Caribbean diaspora because it engages with a genre that has generally been neglected."" -- Comparative Drama ""I recommend the introduction as a teachable essay for an undergraduate course and the monograph as a whole for anyone who wants to understand the intellectual contributions of Puerto Rican diasporic writers to the theorization of revolution, activism, and performance politics."" -- Latin American Theatre Review ""Seeming to speak directly to a stressed, overwhelmed, and vulnerable readership, this book provides a needed perspective and comfort, grounded in historical context and political activist experiential knowledge, amid the ongoing cycle of feeling empowered or helpless depending on the day's media coverage. Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama looks not to immediate gratification, but to sustained resistance and lasting progress."" -- Latino Studies ""Jon D. Rossini's Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama is not only a dazzlingly insightful book that reconceptualizes received histories of Latiné/x drama and performance but also one that radically reorients conventional logics about the glows of Puerto Rican diasporic thinking throughout the hemisphere."" -- Modern Drama

Author Information

Jon D. Rossini is Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance and Performance Studies, at the University of California, Davis.

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