Towards a Post-Nuyorican Literature

 Maritza Stanchich
 University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

Whether Puerto Rican patria is geographically contingent or not has

 been rendered moot by the diaspora, in all its permutations,
 historically as well as contemporarily construed. With an eye to
one of these ongoing contemporary permutations, this paper historicizes
"Nuyorican" literature at a time when it has become readily apparent at just
about every level of discourse that decades-old conceptualizations of the
diaspora are no longer tenable in Puerto Rico, as the disappointing film "El
Suefio del Regreso" (2005) made painfully clear. In historicizing Nuyorican
literature, this study does not imply an imposed need to go beyond Nuyorican
self-identifications, or deny the continued traditions of Nuyorican cultural
production; rather, it addresses paradigmatic shifts that complicate, rethink
and challenge "Nuyorican" as a catchall term for diasporic productions, much
as the term "Diasporican" has recently done.1 It argues that 1980s and '90s
literary productions and the canon as a whole is too varied and multiply-
located to be accurately termed Nuyorican, as diasporic Puerto Rican writers
continue to emerge from a field of broader trajectories, more complex
genealogies, and varied class and political stances. My analysis, however, is
also grounded in practical teaching concerns, regarding the still relatively
new and popular courses on diasporic Puerto Rican and Latina/o literature
at the University of Puerto Rico's English Department in the College of
Humanities at the main Rio Piedras campus. A broader view asks, what is at
stake in teaching diasporic Puerto Rican literature in Puerto Rico, in terms
of the "work" such literature performs here?
 I refer to the entire corpus of "diasporic Puerto Rican" literature because
I consider it important to retain the identification of "Puerto Rican" for
diasporic Puerto Rican writers, emphasizing the refusal of a hyphenated
Puerto Rican-American identity, as critics have pointed out (Flores 2000: 167-
190; Grosfoguel et al. 1997). In so doing, I am not as preoccupied with defining
and maintaining distinct national locations as with recognizing a substantial
inter-American community and a shared, if at times internally contested,