Working and Writing for Change

Series Editors: Steve Parks and Jessica Pauszek

Victor Villanueva tells stories of The Forever Colony through snippets of memoir, creative nonfiction, and fictional magical realism. Each chapter opens with a personal memory and a particular rhetorical trope that reinforces the ongoing colonialism symbolized by Puerto Rico. Memoir and trope are followed by tales told by the spirit Bushika or other narrators, tales with which to imagine Columbus and the Taíno, Ponce deLeón, and others sometimes forgotten in histories of Puerto Rico, like the legendary cacica/leader Yuíza, the pirate Miguel Enríquez, the revolutionaries of the 19th century, the journeys north from settler colony to the economic colony in the northern migrations to the U.S. during the mid-20th century. The stories would have us consider colonialism, racism, and political economy from the perspective of one descended from the world's oldest continuous colony.

What People Are Saying

"Villanueva finds a new way to share with readers the signature quality of his writing: its weave of lyricism and analysis, of narrative and argument, of rhetoric and philosophy." -Raúl Sanchez, Associate Professor, University of Florida and author of Inside the Subject: A Theory of Identity for the Study of Writing.

About the Author

Victor Villanueva is Regents Professor and Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Washington State University. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of eight books and nearly fifty articles or chapters in books. Among his books are the award-winning Bootstraps, From an American Academic of Color, Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114 BCE to 2013 CE, and Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, one of the most-adopted books for the training of English teachers of writing in the U.S. and abroad.