120 MARTrzA STANCHICH

class mobility has remained a false promise for the majority of
underprivileged Puerto Ricans in the United States, who still have higher
poverty rates than all other Latino groups and than African-Americans.
Foregrounding such heterogeneity regarding Puerto Rican diasporic literature
also posits a micropolitics for the Puerto Rican community at large that
exposes, undermines, complicates, and critiques Island-based attitudes and
representations of the diaspora.
 My historicizing of a post-Nuyorican literature in the context of
contemporary developments and departures in diasporic Puerto Rican
literature recognizes a more fluid canon, rather than one policed at national
or ideological borders both within and outside a US context. Post-Nuyorican
literature marks shifts in terms of contestatory politics, class mobility, textual
ethnic markers, and new diasporic hybridities, but few texts completely omit
Puerto Rican identifications and ethnic markers altogether, though some
nearly do, such as poet Diana Rivera's Bird Language (1994), despite the
ethnic marketing of its book jacket and introduction.
 The question is begged again, does defining diasporic Puerto Rican
literature chiefly in terms of class struggle and linguistic hybridity distort
the larger literary corpus in reductive ways? And what are the stakes in
pointing out such internal dynamics in both locations? Shifts in and tensions
over class locus and a class-based politics warrant deep consideration for a
variety of reasons, including the accusation that theories of post-ethnicity
imply an abandonment of continuing class struggle. To what degree ethnicity
is a function of class antagonism (Acosta-Belen 1992, Oboler 1995), and to
what degree ethnicity is in flux, are crucial critical questions.2 Such internal
revelations and critiques are needed, such as of internal classism and racism.
Also needed is recognition of the political diversity within middle class
sectors, rather than assuming that social mobility automatically equates
having sold out to the dominant culture by embodying its values. For despite
Esmeralda Santiago's obtuse, tacked-on comemierda ending to her debut
memoir When I Was Puerto Rican (1993), the fact is that, while she may be
social climbing, she is hardly trying to pass. Nor is her work devoid of
important political and historical observations worth explicating through a
post-Nuyorican lens. Her oeuvre demands a critical post-Nuyorican analysis,
while critically assessing the fact of her literary mainstreaming. And so do
the emerging oeuvres of many others.