The purpose of this study was to evaluate observed parenting styles among Puerto Rican parents living in Puerto Rico. Participants included 51 families with a child between the ages of 6 and 11. Families engaged in different behavioral observational tasks. Observations were coded for parenting dimensions and family parenting styles in order to determine its relationship to child outcomes. The Parenting Styles Observation Rating Scale was used to code the observations and the Child Behavior Checklist was used to assess for behavioral problems. Overall, parents received high ratings on warmth, demandingness, and autonomy granting. Supportive demandingness was negatively associated with internalizing, externalizing, and total child problems. The majority of the sample was categorized as authoritative (68.6%), while 23.5% was categorized as “cold.” Authoritative parenting was significantly associated with lower child problems across the board in comparison to “cold” and permissive families. Limitations of the current study were considered. Lastly, the implications of the results and directions for future research in regards to Puerto Rican parenting for families living in Puerto Rico were discussed.

This study explores the phenomenon of Puerto Rican women who have achieved a Ph.D. degree. The researcher utilized a qualitative research methodology to investigate the social aspects that influenced Puerto Rican women to persist in their doctoral programs. Due to the national pool of potential participants, interviews were conducted with Puerto Rican women using video chat software. The researcher utilizes 5 tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the framework for this study, in an effort to address the varying aspects that contribute to the persistence of Puerto Rican women in graduate study, despite the challenges often cited in the literature as deterrents to academic achievement. The participants’ experiences are examined on an individual, interactional, and institutional level, in order to gain insight into their persistence. This study captures the stories of Puerto Rican women raised in the mainland U.S. as well as those raised on the island itself. Ultimately, this study addresses two main gaps in the literature: (1) research is lacking on Latinas who are successful in higher education, and (2) traditional research tends to describe Latino/a academic achievement as a collective, with little attention given to the cultural distinctions of Latino subgroups in their educational trajectories.

Puerto Rican culture often includes music as a method of expressing cultural identity. For instance, music has been considered a symbol of resistance, identity, and performative culture for many Puerto Ricans. This thesis will heavily rely on the involvement of Afro-Latin music in literature to determine ways that Puertorriqueñidad can be defined. To do this, I will examine how Puerto Rican writers present their identity in their works to define what it means to be Puerto Rican. These writers include the poet Sandra María Esteves and author Judith Ortiz Cofer. Throughout their literary works, they express several connections to their Puerto Rican identity, and through close examination, I was able to compile these connections to music, feminist ideologies, and themes of resistance and oppression. Using the scholarship of Puerto Rican scholar Juan Flores' From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity and Chicana feminist theorist Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed, this thesis will contribute to the examination of music in literature as defying systems of oppression in Puerto Rican culture and explore the relationship between music and Puerto Rican identity.

Section of a novel.

Gringa-Rican is a collection of short stories told through the lens of various female, Puerto Rican protagonists. They highlight the duality of one’s existence, when one is from neither here nor there. The stories explore ideas of dislocation, assimilation and identity, through a Puerto Rican family that moves from their home island to the United States. I was inspired to write these stories because of my own family’s pursuit of the American Dream. This thesis is, in part, a labor of love. Growing up, there were not many stories with families like mine. For this reason, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, I found myself trying to depict someone I wasn’t. I did not feel like I could truly write about my experience in the diaspora, because it did not matter. Eventually, this changed when I read books like We the Animals by Justin Torres, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. For the first time, I saw myself as someone with a story worthy of being written and read. This collection is the product of years of writing, drafting and editing. I have laughed and cried, worried and dreamed. Now, I send it off to the world hoping that my work inspires others. I hope that these stories serve as both mirrors and windows. I hope that these characters, these lives I’ve created, feel as real to the reader as they do to me.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-180).

Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898. Since then, our identity and culture has been threatened by the impositions of the colonizer. The so-called “identity crisis” caused by the relationship with the U.S. government, is felt not only at a personal level, but also in our economy, politics and sociability. With the theme Decolonizing Architecture I explore our condition of colony, the struggles of the Puerto Rican people in favor of our emancipation and the role of architecture and memory to transcend our insular circumstance. My thesis focuses on the island of Vieques, a Puerto Rican Municipality that was invaded in 1941 by the U.S. Navy. The navy expropriated 2/3 of the island. The East was used as a weapons training facility and the West for ammunition storage. The Viequense community, of approximately 10,000 inhabitants, was left in the middle of training zones for war. In 2003, after more than five decades of relentless bombings and the many protests and civil disobedience acts against it from the local community, Puerto Ricans from the main island and in the diaspora, the navy withdrew from Vieques. Currently the previous Live Impact Area on the East side of Vieques is inaccessible due to cleanup from contamination but the land can be used to provide a renewable source of energy that would benefit the municipality. The intervention in the West is located on the former Naval Ammunition Storage Detachment where hundreds of abandoned bunkers are located. These bunkers will be rehabilitated to promote eco-tourism, to provide a space in memory of those who have died at the hands of the navy, and to commemorate Vieques’ triumph. The design proposal is my approach on how to return the land to the community. With this thesis I intend to recognize the collective memory of a people who are still struggling to control their destiny. We should never forget how the Viequenses got together and fought to defend their land and their dignity against the most powerful military in the world; in hopes that the rest of Puerto Ricans can someday understand Vieques as the beggining of the end of colonization.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2009. / Thesis advisor: Antonio García-Lozada. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-201). Abstract available via the World Wide Web.

Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898. Since then, our identity and culture has been threatened by the impositions of the colonizer. The so-called “identity crisis” caused by the relationship with the U.S. government, is felt not only at a personal level, but also in our economy, politics and sociability. With the theme Decolonizing Architecture I explore our condition of colony, the struggles of the Puerto Rican people in favor of our emancipation and the role of architecture and memory to transcend our insular circumstance. My thesis focuses on the island of Vieques, a Puerto Rican Municipality that was invaded in 1941 by the U.S. Navy. The navy expropriated 2/3 of the island. The East was used as a weapons training facility and the West for ammunition storage. The Viequense community, of approximately 10,000 inhabitants, was left in the middle of training zones for war. In 2003, after more than five decades of relentless bombings and the many protests and civil disobedience acts against it from the local community, Puerto Ricans from the main island and in the diaspora, the navy withdrew from Vieques. Currently the previous Live Impact Area on the East side of Vieques is inaccessible due to cleanup from contamination but the land can be used to provide a renewable source of energy that would benefit the municipality. The intervention in the West is located on the former Naval Ammunition Storage Detachment where hundreds of abandoned bunkers are located. These bunkers will be rehabilitated to promote eco-tourism, to provide a space in memory of those who have died at the hands of the navy, and to commemorate Vieques’ triumph. The design proposal is my approach on how to return the land to the community. With this thesis I intend to recognize the collective memory of a people who are still struggling to control their destiny. We should never forget how the Viequenses got together and fought to defend their land and their dignity against the most powerful military in the world; in hopes that the rest of Puerto Ricans can someday understand Vieques as the beggining of the end of colonization.

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