Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere.
The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response.
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"In this gripping collection of essays, poems and photos, Aftershocks of Disaster captures both the roots of Puerto Rico's current crisis in its continuing colonial status and the determination of the island's people to persevere and forge a better future." —Juan González, author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, and co-host of Democracy Now!
"Broad in scope, passionate, and urgent, Aftershocks is a necessary anthology of Puerto Ricans telling the story not just of Maria but of resistance to colonialism, austerity and disaster capitalism." —Molly Crabapple
"As Aftershocks of Disaster makes clear, Hurricane María was only part of the problem. From crumbling infrastructure to austerity, from US governmental interference to an unpayable debt, for hundreds of years before the storm and in the years since, the island has been plagued by multiple Marías. Yet Aftershocks of Disaster makes just as clear that despite multiple disasters and the many shocks and aftershocks they have experienced, Puerto Ricans are working to create their future." —SX Salon
"Hurricane Maria was a major disaster. It is also, potentially, a transformative event. The contributors to this powerful volume explain how big structural forces - climate change, colonialism, corruption, and capitalism - contributed to the devastation, but they also chart a radical path forward, towards a more just and sustainable world." —Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
“For those of us who were forced out of Puerto Rico and who watched the hurricane from outside, this book provides beautiful and painful clarity about how we got here and the struggles behind our survival.” —Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez, Boricua Activist, artist and Chicago Council memberPraise for Bonilla's Non-Soveriegn Futures:
“Non-Sovereign Futures wonderfully fulfills the vision articulated by Trouillot of what a Caribbeanist anthropology can accomplish. What we get here is at once a rich and powerful documentation of a particular political movement and, through that documentation, a set of approaches to thinking about broad and global questions about politics, ideology, and practice.” —Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti“Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment marks a significant intervention into debates about Caribbean pasts in the present. Focusing its historical and ethnographic lens on the 2009 labor upheaval in Guadeloupe, the book explores with methodological verve and seminal insight the paradoxical tension between the desire to resist continued dependence on France, and the difficulty of articulating a vocabulary that might embody the collective demand for an alternative mode of political self-determination. In short, the book aims to put into question whether sovereignty can continue to be imagined as the single normative good and ultimate value of modern political life.” —David Scott, author of Omens of AdversityPraise for Lebron's Policing Life and Death
"In this extraordinary book, Marisol LeBrón does a brilliant job helping us see the everyday activism and cultural inventiveness of Puerto Ricans figuring out how to respond to state repression and colonial capitalism. It’s a genuinely thrilling read."—Laura Briggs, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump
"Policing Life and Death deftly illuminates the long historical presence of 'punitive governance' in Puerto Rico, demonstrating the depth to which gendered racist state violence defines the US colonial/neocolonial relationship with the island and its people. This indispensable study not only focuses on the normalized, cross-generational violence generated by the policing and criminological regimes, but also pays rigorous attention to the ways Puerto Rican activists, artists, community leaders, and others respond to—and potentially transform—this punitive condition." —Dylan Rodriguez, author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the US Prison Regime"LeBrón's rigorously researched, trenchant examination into how everyday life is sectioned, monitored, and controlled is an essential read for understanding modern-day Puerto Rico and all communities and societies negotiating and defending themselves from the layered execution of power. " —Zaire Dinzey-Flores, author of Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City
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Other books edited by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón
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Las Réplicas del Desastre
Edited by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón
Other books of interest
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Floodlines
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Palante
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Ecosocialism
by Michael Löwy -
The Battle For Paradise
by Naomi Klein -
La Batalla Por el Paraíso
by Naomi Klein