Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
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university professors, book publishers emulate the lifestyle of their colleagues in
Hollywood
. More importantly more and more money is spent on promotion and
marketing; agents shove aside editors. Sales conferences at Random House can cost up to
$1 million. Publishers then see themselves unable to publish a book that will sell less than
20,000 copies to cover an average overhead of $100,000.
Large companies, like News Corporation, are also major players in American politics.
The infamous $4.5 million advance proposed to Newt Gingrich by Rupert Murdoch
raised many eyebrows, since the return of such a book could never offset the original
p
ayment. Furthermore, as Andre Schiffrin, director of the independent New Press, points
out, “Harper, Random House, and Simon & Schuster were once bastions of New Deal
liberalism. Yet the current output of US publishing is markedly to the right” (Hazen and
Winokur 1997:83). The publishing industries in the 1990s were comfortable saying that
their decisions had to be made under market pressure.
Nonetheless, in a market economy where goods need to be sold and deposed regularly
books have limited shelf-lives. If they do not sell, they go back to the warehouse and will
b
e recycled as remainders, unloaded at much cheaper prices (instead of being carried as
taxable resources). This is also a related issue of the proliferation of giant chain
b
ookstores. Barnes and Noble had 25 percent market share in the first quarter of 1996.
Other big stores like Borders and the online booksellers Amazon.com all concentrate
their sales on glossy bestsellers. Publishers also provide “co-op”
advertising
money to
help sell their books, either through bookstore advertising or in-store advertisement
p
lacements. Independent book stores are increasingly squeezed out, as played out
uncritically in
You’ve Got Mail
(1999) where Tom
Hanks,
a corporate type, bought up
Meg Ryan’s small children’s bookstore.
Though the picture is bleak for independent book publishers, book stores and readers
who sort these books, independent houses like Grove Press, New Directions, Beacon
Press, Workman Publishing, New Left Books and the New Press have promoted more
innovative publications and alternative agendas. Grove Press, for example, fought
censorship in the 1950s, while New Directions fostered attention for authors as diverse as
Borges and Djuna Barnes. University presses are still the major sources for scholarly
p
ublications that normally do not expect much profit. They are subsidized by universities
that traditionally have seen these arms as ground for furthering intellectual debates, even
though they too are getting more aware of the bottom line.
Publishing, then, has gone from being an intellectual pursuit with commercial interests
to conglomerate businesses in which books are commodities. While American publishers
produce tens of thousands of titles,
freedom
of
information
and democracy of thought
are constrained by the structure of the market, which nonetheless allows cracks of free or
alternative expression to surface and, at times, succeed. The prospect of electronic
p
ublishing and distribution may radically change this in the next few decades. Yet, the
p
atterns rehearsed here are already familiar from other media, and may predict some o
f
the forms that an electronic economy of culture will take.
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Further reading
Coser, L., Kadushin, C. and Powell, W. (1982)
Books,
New York: Basic Books.
Hazen, D. and Winokur, J. (1997)
We the Media,
New York: The New Press.
Whiteside, T. (1981)
The Blockbuster Complex,
Middletown: Wesleyan.
CINDY WONG
Puerto Ricans
Approximately 3 million Puerto Ricans live in the continental United States, with a large
concentration of 2 million in
New York
City.
Migration
from
Puerto Rico
to New York
b
egan with merchants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the second half o
f
the nineteenth century most were political exiles. At the close of the century, many
cigar
makers, educated and politicized through workplace readings, settled in Lower
Manhattan.
Since Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the US in 1898, the United States has served as the
Puerto Rican escape valve to combat unemployment, economic hardship and
overpopulation, despite mainland living conditions that sometimes were worse than those
left behind. Once Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship in 1917, almost 11,000 moved
to New York, creating a large enclave in East
Harlem,
where previous Puerto Rican
immigrants had settled. In this
community,
later known as El Barrio, they preserved their
culture and language through community groups and Spanish-language
newspapers
and
books.
The most extensive migration occurred after the Second World War as thousands saw
their way of life disappear as industrialization, the decimation of
agriculture
and
p
opulation growth rapidly created severe unemployment. In the 1950s, airlines
introduced lower fares and opportunities for unskilled, semi-skilled and agricultural labor
expanded on the mainland. An estimated 470,000 predominantly
working-class
and rural
Puerto Ricans emigrated, including more women than previously During the 1950s and
1960s, most migrants settled in New York City and New Jersey, but others populated
Chicago, IL, Philadelphia, PA
and
Cleveland, OH
.
Although American citizens, Puerto Ricans were largely poor immigrants. They
occupied substandard housing, faced unscrupulous landlords and lacked familiarity with
US cities and cold weather. They faced discrimination because of their
race
and
ethnicity,
language
(and accents) and
religion
. Other problems of
inner-city
poverty—
crime,
gangs,
drugs and, more recently high rates of
AIDS
/HIV—also afflicted them.
Religious and civic associations formed a collective fight against racism and
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discrimination, and gave the immigrants a political voice and a sense of dignity. They
fought being viewed as the stereotypical
Latino
portrayed in Leonard
Bernstein
’s
musical
/film
West Side Story
(1957, film 1961). The Puerto Rican Travelling Theater,
founded in 1967, presents plays in English and Spanish. The Museo del Barrio, founded
in 1969, emphasizes contemporary Puerto Rican and Latin American artists.
In the 1970s, the pattern of migration began to shift. Many low-skilled workers
returned as mainland manufacturing declined and jobs moved overseas. Others, who
never intended to stay permanently, returned after years of work to buy their dream
house. Yet, after the 1980s, many highly skilled university graduates and professionals
reversed this flow, leaving the island to settle in the states.
The generation of Puerto Ricans born in the (continental) United States follows a
different path. Taking advantage of educational opportunities, fluent in English, versed in
American culture and seeking employment in the
civil-rights
era, they leave the barrio
and have made inroads in the professions, the visual and
performing arts,
mass media,
education and politics.
Further reading
Rodriguez, C. (1989)
Puerto Ricans Born in the U.S.A.,
Boulder: Westview Press.
Sánchez Korrol, V. (1994)
From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in
New York City,
Berkeley: University of California.
CARMEN C.ESTEVES
Puerto Rico
One of the largest
Caribbean
islands between
Florida
and South America, Puerto Rico
is still only 100 miles long and 33 miles wide, with a total area of 3,515 square miles. It
contains extraordinary beaches, one of the world’s largest river cave systems and the
United States
park
systems’ only tropical rainforest. Its tropical climate makes it a
favorite vacation destination.
S
p
onsored by the Spanish Crown, Columbus reached the shores of this beautiful,
mountainous island on his second voyage in 1493. The approximately 30,000 Arawak
(Taino) who inhabited the island continued their way of life until 1508, when the island
b
egan to be settled by the Spanish and they were enslaved to work in mines and later in
agriculture
. By 1550 the
American Indian
population had been decimated by European
diseases and maltreatment, as well as by flight and failed rebellions. Slaves from West
Africa replaced the native population, their numbers increasing sharply in the first half o
f
the nineteenth century as Puerto Rico moved to largescale sugar production.
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Today’s population of almost 4 million reflects this historical background in its racial
and cultural characteristics in an extremely densely populated and predominantly urban
environment. Racially, the population consists of the progeny of
white
and
African
American
families, but it is a largely mulatto mixture of whites, blacks and Arawaks.
Some coastal towns are inhabited by a majority of blacks, attesting to a past of plantation
slavery in these areas. Puerto Rico’s Spanish
language
and the dominance of Catholicism
are derivatives of Spain.
Puerto Rico has never been a free and independent nation. After three centuries o
f
absolute and often oppressive Spanish rule, Spain ceded it to the United States in 1898,
after its military occupation in the Spanish American War. For more than one hundred
years, this relationship with the US has been defined through a web of often tense and
ambivalent political, economic, social and cultural ties. In 1917, as the US prepared to
enter the First World War, for example, Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship and the
right to elect their entire legislature. Nevertheless, the appointed governor maintained the
power to veto legislation and to select judicial and executive officers, and
Congress
could annul legislation.
It was not until 1948 that Puerto Ricans elected their own governor. The result was a
mandate for Muñoz Marín, the architect of the island’s economic development program,
Operation Bootstrap, and a proponent of turning Puerto Rico into an
Estado Libre
A
sociado
—an associated free state. On July 25, 1952, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
was created with its own constitution. Education, health, justice and welfare are under
Puerto Rican control. The United States retains control over
trade,
defense,
immigration,
the postal system, the currency and international relations.
For decades, the organization of political parties focused on the options for the political
status of the island: independence, statehood or continuation of semi-autonomous
Commonwealth status. When the Popular Democratic Party was formed in 1938, its
p
rogram focused on improving the stagnant economy and poor living conditions. As it
launched Operation Bootstrap, it was forced to take a proCommonwealth position to
attract corporations that were hesitant to invest resources in an independent Puerto Rico.
The economy of the island has evolved from agricultural to industrial since the 1940s.
In 1955, for the first time, manufacturing contributed more to the economy than
agriculture. The transition displaced workers and families from rural areas, where two-
thirds of the population lived in 1940, to towns and urban centers where two-thirds o
f
Puerto Ricans live now, including the capital, San Juan (437,745 in 1990), Bayamon,
Ponce, Carolina and Caguas. Manufacturing provides about 40 percent of the gross
domestic product, with more than one hundred pharmaceutical companies, the main
industry, accounting for one-quarter of that total.
Operation Bootstrap emphasized industry,
tourism
and the production of rum. Local
tax exemptions were provided for industrial and tourism development, and promotional
campaigns were initiated in the United States to attract investors and visitors. Congress
also sanctioned federal corporate tax exemptions on profits earned on the island. These
stimulated growth, but budget cuts pressured Congress to phase them out over ten years,
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beginning in 1996, exacerbating Puerto Rico’s high unemployment rate.
In politics, Puerto Ricans hold US passports and vote in state and national elections
when residing in the (continental) United States. They do not vote for the president or
have voting representatives in Congress when living on the island.
Throughout the twentieth century, Puerto Ricans have struggled to maintain their
identity under the process of acculturation that started in 1898. Although, officially
Puerto Rico has two
languages,
Spanish and English, Puerto Ricans have always
considered Spanish to be their mother tongue. It reflects the diversity of Puerto Rico’s
heritage—many towns have maintained their preColumbian names and many other pre-
Columbian and African words are part of everyday speech. The intrusion of English was
first felt through imported consumer products; adults asked for Singers, not sewing
machines. English also became a mandated subject in
public schools
. It became the
second language of millions of largely
working-class
Puerto Ricans in the continental
United States, who maintain a migratory circle between the island and mainland cities.
Music and
food
are bastions of cultural resistance.
Salsa
is heard from home and car
radios. American
fast food
is found throughout the island, but traditional food remains
the staple in most households and restaurants. Rice and small pink or kidney beans,
whole roast suckling pig, prepared for the
holidays
and large family reunions, and fresh
ham, seasoned with
adobo,
a thick paste of garlic, olive oil, vinegar, peppercorns, salt and
oregano, remain favorites of the Puerto Rican table. Love of the homeland, culture and
strong
family
ties also prove evident in the joyful cheers that spontaneously erupt among
planeloads of returning Puerto Ricans as they land on their island.
Further reading
Melendez, E. and Melendez, E. (eds) (1993)
Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on
Contemporary Puerto Rico,
Boston: South End.
Morales Carrion, A. (ed.) (1983)
Puerto Rico,
New York: W.W.Norton.
CARMEN C.ESTEVES
Pulitzer Prize
Awarded annually by Columbia University since 1917, the Pulitzer Prize recognizes
achievements in American journalism, letters,
drama
and music. The journalism
category has fourteen separate awards, while the letters category offers awards for fiction,
history, poetry,
biography or autobiography and general non-fiction. A Pulitzer-Prize
b
oard makes recommendations for the prizes, which include a gold medal for public
service in journalism and $5,000 awards for the other categories. Hungarian-
b
orn
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 930
immigrant Joseph Pulitzer, publisher and owner of the
St. Louis-Dispatch
and the
N
ew
York World,
endowed both the Pulitzer Prizes and the Columbia University’s Graduate
School of Journalism.
COURTNEY BENNETT
punk rock
Descended from the sonic experimentation of the Stooges and the Velvet Underground
and the glam performance of the New York Dolls, punk rock developed in
New Yor
k
City, NY at the CBGB club on the Bowery in 1974. The sound was alternately loud and
fast, abrasive, discordant and melodic as practiced by such performers as the Ramones,
the Patti Smith Group, and the Heartbreakers. Both retro-populist and avant-garde
experimental, punk was defined more by attitude than musical style, as expressed in such
song titles as “I Don’t Care,” “Blank Generation,” and “I Wanna Be Sedated.” In 1976
p
unk traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming an international media sensation when
British groups like the Sex Pistols and the Clash topped the charts with their scandalous
calls for anarchy and violence. In London and New York punk caught the spirit of the
decline of the West in the 1970s.
Punk rock spread in the following years and, by the end of the 1970s, vibrant local
scenes had developed in
Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX
, Athens,
GA, Vancouver, British Colombia
(Canada)
and countless other towns across North
America. By 1980 a mutant offspring called hardcore had developed, most vibrantly in
the
suburban
communities of Southern
California
. Bands such as Black Flag, the
Middle Class and the Adolescents carried on the spirit of punk protest through such songs
as “No Values,” “Love is Just a Tool,” and “Kids of the Black Hole.” The hardcore punk
scenes were especially noted for their violence, both between various punks and between
punks and police.
DEWAR MACLEOD
puritanism
Puritanism began as a religious reform movement within the Church of England and
spread to the northern English colonies in the early and middle seventeenth century. In
recent years the term has often been used simply as a pejorative to designate anyone who
is prudish, unemotional or intolerant. However, strains of Puritanism persisted even in the
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last half of the twentieth century.
Early American puritans hoped to establish a city of God that would fuse the political
and religious community into a theocracy. Although less prevalent in the 1950s and
1960s, this changed in the 1970s with the development of organizations such as the
Moral Majority
and the Christian Coalition. These groups pursued avowedly Christian
agendas and became influential in politics, especially at the level of congressional and
senatorial primaries. A second element in Puritanism was the castigation of sensual
p
leasures. While the 1960s marked a substantial change in social conventions, it
continued to be the case that prostitution was only legal in certain parts of Nevada,
recreational drug use was severely punished and references to sex on
radio
and
television
were highly constricted. A less famous aspect of Puritanism was its emphasis
on public sermons as a means of excoriating the sins of the
community
. These often
strayed from traditional Biblical topics and became detailed critiques of the political
system and the personal responsibility of those within it. This use of the sermon was
employed by both ends of the political spectrum, from Martin Luther
King
, Jr.
challenging
segregation
to conservative television evangelists attacking the moral decay
of the country and its leaders.
RODGER JAGKSON
Puzo, Mario
b. 1920; d. 1999
Novelist, seen by many critics as responsible for killing
Italian American
literature
with the publication of
The Godfather
(1969).
New York
-
b
orn and educated, Puzo
published two critically acclaimed, but largely unread novels (
The Fortunate Pilgrim
1965;
The Dark Arena,
1970), before deciding to write his first pulp novel.
The
Godfather
mixed narratives from Italian American
immigration
history with invented
traditions about the Mafia (e.g. their use of the term “godfather”), many of which were
then picked up by members of the mob (especially after the success of the
Hollywood
movie trilogy for which Puzo’s screenplays earned two Oscars). Following the Godfather
series, mob family chronicles became the staple for Italian American novels.
ROBERT GREGG
Pynchon, Thomas
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 932
b. 1937
Certainly one of the most important of America’s postwar novelists. In works such as
V
(1963),
Gravity’s Rainbow
(1973) and
Mason and Dixon
(1997), Pynchon combined
pyrotechnic verbal skills and a near-encyclopedic knowledge of both learned and popular
culture to produce a distinctive fictional universe, rife with paranoiac visions and textual
puzzles. Along with J.D.
Salinger,
Pynchon was also one of literary America’s most
famous recluses, so successfully excluding the trappings of public
celebrity
that his
whereabouts became a topic of rumor and speculation. This mysterious and shadowy
existence, along with his unique fictional vision, found a ready fit to an age much given
over to elaborate conspiracies about the powers-that-be.
MARK BREWIN
Q
Quakers
The Religious Society of Friends of the Truth (Quakers) was introduced into the United
States by groups of religious mystics arriving from England in the mid-1700s. Centered
in New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, Quakers became known for
several aspects of their theology: commitment to non-violence; wide-ranging public
service (e.g. hospitals, orphanages, anti-slavery advocacy and service to the poor); an
emphasis on strict religious integrity in daily life (e.g. economic transactions); worship
service which lacked paid or “hireling” ministers, but instead was “unprogrammed,”
b
ased upon silent waiting for Divine inspiration; and social insularity that sought to
protect their communities from corruption by “the world’s people.” Often, these
communities were marked by idiosyncratic language and dress.
The third-largest American denomination in 1750, their proportion had declined to
ninth-largest by 1820. Nevertheless, during the next century Quakers spread across the
United States, holding leadership roles—both as individuals and congregations—in
various reform movements (notably
African American
, Native American and women’s
rights and
prison
reform) and sending vigorous missionary envoys to establish schools
and hospitals in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. As Quakers moved west from the US
east coast, worship styles changed also, and in many locations Quakerism now includes
paid professional ministers and “programmed” services that include a prepared sermon
Entries A-Z 933
and music. In 1990 there were about 300,000 Quakers in the world, of whom about one-
third were in the United States. Most modern Friends have abandoned specialized
communities, language and dress. However, Quakers remain active in a wide range o
f
social reform, educational and quasi-
p
olitical organizations, which promote the peace and
j
ustice testimonies that are central to their theology.
EMMA LAPSANSKY
Queens
s
ee
New York City and its boroughs
queer
“Queer” emerged as a politically charged term around the time that
AIDS
politics
gathered urgent momentum. With the advent of such groups as
ACT UP
(AIDS Coalition
to Unleash Power, 1987) and Queer Nation (1990), issues of
homophobia
and
gender
and sexuality
were soon recognized as key political concerns. While
Stonewall
(1969)
served as the historical marker for gay and lesbian politics and identity many younger
activists saw this version of identity as too assimilated in and abject to heterosexual
culture. Strategies for AIDS activism, on the other hand, demanded a radical term that
announced the fact that the disease was particularly affecting those whose sexual desire
was very different from the heterosexual norm. “Queer” fit the bill.
From the streets to the radical possibilities of the ivory tower the notion of queer found
its way into departments of English Literature,
Film
Studies and even
Architecture
. In
1990 Judith Butler’s
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
and Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick’s
Epistemology of the Closet
(1990) arguably set the stage for queer
theory. Scholars such as these and Michael Warner rethought the essentializing
p
ropositions of identity politics that most often attended traditional gay, lesbian and
feminist politics. Merging especially the works of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser and
Jacques Derrida, American queer theorists queered poststructural itself. After all,
Althusser and Derrida make strange bedfellows.
The vitality and importance of the term “queer” (although often perceived as
recapitulating a historically pejorative adjective) is its suggestive refusal of cultural
conditions that insist on an identity as such. The dilemma “queers” once again face, as
does any radical social movement, is the solidification of meaning for this once radical
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 934
word. Under the aegis of capitalism, it is no surprise that “Queer Theory” has become a
cottage industry.
S
ee also:
gender and sexuality
DAVID GERSTNER
quinceaños
Lavish, traditional
coming-of-age
celebration or a young woman’s fifteenth birthday,
practiced in Hispanic countries and
Latino
diaspora communities. Quinceaños parties in
upper-class
families are similar to debutante balls. They take place in private clubs or
fancy hotels, and groups of wealthy women dressed in elegant designer gowns are
formally presented to society.
Middle-class
celebrations are usually less ostentatious and
often take place in family
homes
. The inclusion of a Catholic Mass as part of the
festivities is losing popularity. For some assimilated families it has been replaced by a
sweet-sixteen party.
CARMEN C.ESTEVES
R
race and ethnicity
The fundamental discourse of division in American culture for the last three centuries has
been that of race, specifically the division of “black” and
“white
.
”
In many ways, in fact,
this framework has eclipsed fundamental issues of
class
and confused issues of gender
and citizenship, especially in everyday discussion. Other groups—
N
ative Americans,
Asian Americans, Hispanics, Irish Americans, Jews,
etc.—have “fit” into American
society in terms of this division as well. Hence, terms like “ethnicity” or stereotypes o
f
new immigrants cannot be discussed without some understanding of the history and
construction of race.
Race, in turn, has fundamentally referred to the social construction of
biology
. Often,
this has meant phenotype—what someone looks like, based on skin color and a few
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