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Boricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negrón-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical West Side Story to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicle Seva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferré to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negrón-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinating blend of low life and high culture: a highly original, challenging, and lucid new work by one of our most talented cultural critics.

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CHOICE Review

The term "Boricua" means "Puerto Rican." These provocative and broad-ranging essays by filmmaker and cultural critic Negron-Muntaner (Columbia Univ.) examine "the most conspicuous" of Puerto Ricans in late-20th-century US popular culture and media, while framing an original critical analysis of Puerto Rican ethnic identity and its reception and (often) rejection in the US. Besides the unusual cast of characters--Rita Moreno, superstar Holly Woodlawn, Jean Michel Basquiat (whose Puerto Rican heritage is often unacknowledged), Rosario Ferre, (a pre-JLo Jennifer Lopez), Ricky Martin, and even the Mattel toy, Puerto Rican Barbie--this work's originality lies in its critical framework of "shame" and "queerness," which Negron-Muntaner feels informs Puerto Rican lives and "performances" in the US. The essays include scathing portrayals of Madonna, Andy Warhol, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Keith Haring, all of whom the author argues profited through the adoption and exploitation of Puerto Rican talent, culture, and style. Some readers will no doubt find this collection controversial. But most of the essays--particularly those on Woodlawn and Basquiat--are controlled, poignant, and simply brilliant. This eclectic, always interesting work will be certain to elicit discussion among faculty and students of ethnic studies, US popular culture, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. S. A. Vega Garcia Iowa State University