When 'I' became ethnic: ethnogenesis and three early Puerto Rican diaspora writers

Résumé 0

"Criticism of Esmeralda Santiago´s use of the past tense in the title When I Was Puerto Rican revealed the ambiguity of debate about Puerto Rican identity and uncovered the essentialist perception of "Puerto Ricanness" that still lingers. Looking at the development of Puerto Rican "ethnicity" and "nationality" from a sociohistorical perspective, we see that there are strongreasons for Puerto Ricans in the United States to emphasize the former over the latter, a phenomenon that critics must take into account in understanding the literature of Puerto Ricans in America. To illustrate this point, this study analyzes the "enthogenesis"-the production of ethnic signs-in the texts of three early diasporic Puerto Rican writers.-Thestudied texts of the three writers-Jesús Colón, Pura Belpré and Graciany Miranda Archilla-demonstrate that each writer has a different view of, and rhetorical purpose for, Puerto Rican ethnicity. The texts also show that whenever ethnicity has been emphasized, nationalistic concerns were displaced or minimized. That the ethnic project differs in the case of each writer affirms the idea that ethnic identity, as social and textual construct, is perceived and valued differently. These three early Puerto Rican diaspora writers enhance our current understanding of how they faced the same issues of identity that continue to vex our contemporary writers, and their work sheds new light on how Puerto Rican ethnicity is constructed textually."