Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico 2012th Edition

Winner of the 2014 Puerto Rican Studies Association’s Frank Bonilla Book Award

“From former slaves’ murmurs of discomfiture to the loquacious assertions of powerful men, this book listens hard to conversations about race. It resonates in multiple registers, forcing readers to pay attention not just to what people say, but to what they don’t say. Rodriguez-Silva has transformed Puerto Rican history.” – Alejandra Bronfman, University of British Columbia

“Ileana Rodríguez-Silva has produced a masterful account of racial formation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Puerto Rico and its connections with slavery, emancipation, gender, and colonialism. Her multilayered analysis of the ‘silences’ surrounding everyday forms of racialization is original, fascinating, and persuasive.” – Carlos Aguirre, University of Oregon