Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore is a must-read for those interested in the cultural layout of early twentieth-century Puerto Rico and its burgeoning, sociopolitical consciousness. Ocasio expertly traces the multicultural artifacts of oral transmission collected by ‘the Father of American Anthropology,’ Franz Boas and his mentee, John Alden Mason, on the Island at the turn of the century, revealing the relationship between those texts and Boricua identity. Angie Willis, co-author of forthcoming Reinaldo Arenas, Pedagogue: Readings for a Post-Fidel Castro Era

Rafael Ocasio's Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore will be of significant interest to students of Puerto Rican culture and history as it skillfully revives important events involving the U.S. and Puerto Rico that have lost definition with the passing of time, even if they have not lost relevance. The author brings to bear on an anthropological topic his unique talent for literary and cultural criticism. Rudyard Alcocer, author of Time Travel in the Latin American & Caribbean Imagination: Re-reading History

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore fills in gaps both in the historiography of Puerto Rican cultural history and in the history of folkloristics in the United States. Necessary and timely issues of race, colonialism, and class as they affected the collecting and editing processes are addressed in detail. Issues of gender inequality and the effects of not including adult women in the collection, are mentioned but not unpacked at the same level. Journal of Folklore Research

Greyhound Grad Publishes Two Books Focused on Puerto Rican Folklore,' by Desiree Cooper Eastern New Mexico University

For all these dazzling discoveries made with academic and intellectual rigor, you have to read this new book by Rafael Ocasio. I read it with interest, with amazement and, above all, with gratitude. Centro Journal

Race Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore, Ocasio, then, makes his impact on the future of his island, as well as on a future in which we study and document small, still colonized, nations, and by doing so state that they are not expendable. That no nation is. South Atlantic Review