Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mining The Meaning Of Collective Memory And Imagination: The Construction Of Identity In The Puerto Rican Diaspora, Courtney Hooper

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project illuminates the relationship between cultural resistance, cultural production, and cultural identity in the poetry of Puerto Ricans in New York (“Nuyoricans”). Through textual analysis, informal interviews, and participant observation conducted in the South Bronx, this project is interested in how the descriptions of the island as “home” are used to mediate a cultural or ethnic identity, particularly amongst a people who do not live there, or perhaps never have. While the construction of an ethnic identity and a conceptual homeland in a diasporic community has been studied in past research, the intention here is to elaborate upon the …

Ashes From Falling Stars, John A. Nieves

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a book length collection of poetry—all original and by the author. The book has three chapters, each with a different mode of expressing the work’s overall theme: the remnants of unfulfilled wishes. The first chapter deals with ordinary or mundane manifestations of the theme. The second chapter covers extraordinary, but still feasible, variations on the theme. The final chapter deals with subconscious versions of these unfulfilled wishes. It is far more surreal than the other two chapters and exists in a sort of dream-reality.

The poetry included in this work is all free verse. There are narrative …

Prairie Suite: A Celebration, Twyla Hansen, Paul A. Johnsgard

Paul Johnsgard Collection

25 poems by Twyla Hansen, with illustrations by Paul A. Johnsgard, including:

Walk on the Prairie

There is mystery here, in the shapes of grass,
in the dim movements of an inland sea,
connections to an earlier time. Wander barefoot,
hypothesize the dance of millennia, the unbearable
carvings of the built environment, this ragtag escape.

Let its divine simplicity ooze into your pores.
Comb the steel from your hair, blanket your
tongue with orange. Your breathing will slow.
Breathing slow, unbutton the child within.
Give her permission to go fly a kite.