Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship: Representations in Media [Hardcover]

Puerto Rican soldiers have been consistently whitewashed out of the narrative of American history despite playing parts in all American wars since WWI. This book examines the online self-representation of Puerto Rican soldiers who served during the War on Terror, focusing on social networking sites, user-generated content, and web memorials.Introduction 1. Saving Private Fulano de Tal: Representations of Puerto Rican Soldiers in Television and Film 2. Digital Bodies at War: The Boricua Soldier in Social Networking Sites 3. Broadcasting Puerto Ricanness: Mash-up Identities in the User-Generated-Content Zone 4. Digital Epitaphs: Web memorializing Puerto Rican Soldiers in the 21st Century Conclusions

Responding to the fact that the experiences of Puerto Rican soldiers have been almost entirely absent from mainstream media for decades, Manuel Avil?s-Santiago's groundbreaking study explores how they self-represent themselves and their role in the War on Terror via social media. This much-needed investigation is thoroughly engaging, important, and enlightening. - Charles Ram?rez Berg, Joe M. Dealey, Sr. Professor, Media Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Manuel Avil?s-Santiago's research has evolved from his keen observations as a youngster of the robust military contributions of his own family, to discovering a curious absence of a Puerto Rican presence in dominant representations of U.S. wars, to finally finding the Puerto Rican serviceman self-representations on social media networks, with particular attention to their racial and colonial subjectivity. Avil?s-Santiago succeeds in carefully deconstructing and analyzing the self-created representations, and comparing them with what (few) representations have been made by the dominant media. Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship provides a window into the s the younger generations' self-expression - and opens up major areas still ripe for further study. This work is alĂ