An Ecocritical Study of Puerto Rican Culture: Disaster Nation

This book contrasts Puerto Rico’s eco-political history with its narrative and symbolic routes of disaster, trauma, and resilience, noting points of convergence and divergence. Since hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 there has been an explosion of creative and critical works that depict and analyze the aftermath of disaster, and this book systematically documents the continuities and discontinuities of how disasters are represented and underrepresented from earlier eras to the present. This book offers a politically-challenging cultural analysis that goes beyond orthodox Puerto Rican cultural thinking.

María Acosta Cruz received a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is Full Professor of Spanish at Clark University, USA, where she explores Hispanic Caribbean language and culture issues. Using ecocriticism, she looks at the impacts of socio-political history on nationhood, gender constructions, and Puerto Rican culture. Among her published works is Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture & the Fictions of Independence.