Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

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Aurora Santiago Ortiz

A close-up of Jorell Meléndez-Badillo.

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Although Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, many of us don’t know as much about this Spanish-speaking archipelago as we should. In Puerto Rico: A National History (Princeton University Press), Jorell Meléndez-Badillo — an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at UW-Madison — traces Puerto Rico’s history from pre-Columbus times to the present. In this sweeping and scholarly narrative, the author covers colonialism, revolt and the creation of a national identity while also offering new perspectives. Meléndez-Badillo will be joined by Aurora Santiago Ortiz, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at UW-Madison. The book also is available in Spanish, and copies of both editions are expected to be for sale at the reading.

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Jorell Meléndez-Badillo and Aurora Santiago Ortiz for a reading and conversation on Jorell's newest book Puerto Rico: A National History. Join us for an intriguing conversation with these local authors and professors! 

This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own.

About the book

Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago’s people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today.

In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico’s turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511—led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II—to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States.

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is a historian of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. His work focuses on the global circulation of radical ideas from the standpoint of working-class intellectual communities. He is currently Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Aurora Santiago Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chicane/Latine Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on antiracist feminisms, decolonial perspectives, and participatory action research. Her work has been published in the Centro Journal: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Curriculum Inquiry, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, and the International Journal of Qualitative Research among others. She has also contributed to Society and Space, NACLA, The Abusable Past blog of the Radical History Review, Electric Marronage, Open Democracy, Caliban’s Readings, and Zora magazine. Her current book manuscript entitled Circuits of Self-Determination: Mapping Radical Solidarities and Infrastructures of Resistance in Twenty-first Century Puerto Rico studies anarchist, anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist grassroots and mutual aid projects that enact a prefigurative politics of decolonization in the present.