The first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visability and cultural impact. The author looks as such pop icons as JLo and Ricky Martin as well as West Side Story.

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.

"Provocative and broad-ranging . . . 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." - Choice

"A perspicacious new book and one of the most intellectually exciting works of recent years, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of American Culture gives new meaning to the idea of the pleasure of the text" - QBR

"Mixing the down and dirty with high culture to come up with good look at the transculture effects of it all." - San Juan Star