When: Wednesday, September 15th
Time: 4:00 pm
Where: NQ 292
Abstract:
Implementation of the Puerto Rican industrialization program known as Operation Bootstrap (1947) marked the beginning of a Puerto Rican diaspora that continues until this day. The first wave of Puerto Rican migrants arrived to the Northeastern industrial centers of the US as a racialized, colonized Other, as immigrants despite their status as American citizens, and as members of a subordinated working class to be mined for cheap labor. Through the poems and plays of writer Miguel Piñero (1946-1988), Dr. Geyer examines the marginality of Puerto Ricans in late 20th-century New York and the manner in which Piñero revisits scenes of failure, loss, and stigma in Puerto Rican communities in order to reclaim them as sites of utopian possibility.