Manhattan Tropics / Trpico En Manhattan (Recuperacion De La Herencia Literaria Hispana En Los Eeuu / Recovering the Us Hipanic Literary Heritage) - Softcover

Cotto-Thorner, Guillermo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558858814 ISBN 13: 9781558858817

Publisher: Arte Publico Press, 2019

Synopsis

This engaging historical novel reveals the experiences

of Puerto Ricans in New York City in the mid-twentieth century.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Walking underground" for the first time in his life, Juan Marcos Villalobos, a freshly arrived migrant to New York City, offers his seat to a woman standing on the subway. Though his English isn't up to her rude reply, he quickly realizes that good manners in Nueva York are quite different than in Puerto Rico!

Juan Marcos is eager to continue his studies in the United States and rents a room from family friends living in El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem. Soon, he has a job wrapping packages at a department store that pays as much as he made teaching high school at home. As he interacts with the Puerto Rican community in New York, he witnesses the problems his compatriots encounter, including discrimination, inadequate housing, jobs and wages. Despite these problems, friendships and romances bloom and rivalries surface, leading to betrayal and even attempted murder!

Originally published in 1951 as Tropico en Manhattan, it was the first novel to focus on the postwar influx of Puerto Ricans to New York. Cotto-Thorner's use of code-switching, or "Spanglish," reflects the characters' bicultural reality and makes the novel a forerunner of Nuyorican writing and contemporary Latino literature. This new bilingual edition contains a first-ever English translation by J. Bret Maney that artfully captures the style and spirit of the original Spanish. The novel's exploration of class, race and gender"¬‚¬"while demonstrating the community's resilience and cultural pride"¬‚¬"ensures its relevance today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1558858814
• ISBN 13: 9781558858817
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192