Puerto Rican citizen: history and political identity in twentieth-century New York City

摘要

After the USA conferred citizenship on the residents of Puerto Rico in 1917, Puerto Rican migrants to New York City arrived as citizens. Yet their official citizenship did not protect them from, being widely derided as dangerously foreign and racially inferior. As Lorrin Thomas describes in detail, the same racialized narratives intended to justify the denial of sovereignty to Puerto Rico also impeded the upward mobility and empowerment of Puerto Ricans in New York City.