Puerto Rico Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman and Marisa Budlong

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...

Film

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

West Side Story displaces the true story of the Young Lords Organization’s civil rights struggle

December 15, 2021 • by Jacqueline Lazú

For many, West Side Story is simply an iconic musical with catchy tunes. For me, however, it became a critical entryway into political consciousness about when and how Puerto Ricans matter in United States history, and why popular representations are instrumental to that....

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

Psyche

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

On trans identity, poetry, and fighting for the dignity of one’s body

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

i. i say morning off-white ceiling insect corpse light dent fixture twenty-year-old piece of double-sided tape breath breaking mirror sun through gate’s red curtain I say to the ceiling: “I wish I wasn’t here anymore.” My body hadn’t been cooperating with me. I was constantly tired. A long-term relationship had ended. My graduate ...

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

Psyche

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

In a new cycle of poems, poet Isa Guzman explores their personal experience of gender-confirmation

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

1. I think with observable sunsets my mother’s bodily purging calm hums abstracted pigeons awake along a broken wall of context the way the hip doesn’t curve won’t ever the alienating anatomic bone structure of verbs growing winds and winding contours of hysteria anatomical witchcraft another day another extension of empty ...

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

Feature

“There Is No Space for Us”

New York’s Housing Shortage Leaves Hurricane Evacuees in Limbo

July 15, 2018 • by Paula Moura

The terrifying message came via a robo-call on April 20. “Pack your things. Your stay is not the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) responsibility anymore,” Andrea Tejeda, 26, recalls hearing on her cellphone. She was one of a dozen Puerto Rican families dislocated by last September’s devastating Hurricane Maria staying in ...

Feature

After Hurricane Maria

Puerto Ricans Find Refuge in a Central Massachusetts City

November 21, 2017 • by Amaris Castillo

Krysthina Ortiz refused to get up from a chair outside her school’s main office. Tears streamed down the 9-year-old’s face as she looked up at her mother, Krysthia Gauthier. “No quiero ir (I don’t want to go)! No quiero ir!” the girl cried. Gauthier leaned forward and wiped her daughter’s face with her ...