Seams of Empire tells the story of journalists, writers, and activists who challenged and re-imagined colonial and racial arrangements in Puerto Rico and the United States from 1940 to 1972. In particular, the book argues for a move beyond comparison as a methodological lens for understanding race in Puerto Rico and the United States. In its place, the book proposes racial imbrication, or the structured and relational ideas about race that also highlight hidden relations of power, as an alternative analytic lens. Using racial imbrication, Alamo Pastrana argues that responses to institutionaliz ... More

Seams of Empire tells the story of journalists, writers, and activists who challenged and re-imagined colonial and racial arrangements in Puerto Rico and the United States from 1940 to 1972. In particular, the book argues for a move beyond comparison as a methodological lens for understanding race in Puerto Rico and the United States. In its place, the book proposes racial imbrication, or the structured and relational ideas about race that also highlight hidden relations of power, as an alternative analytic lens. Using racial imbrication, Alamo Pastrana argues that responses to institutionalized racism and colonialism produced an oft-overlooked archive of texts created by African American and Puerto Rican writers and activists that complicate traditional readings of race in both national spaces. Analyses of this overlooked archive demonstrate the deep symbolic and material connections between marginalized subjects, social movements, and racial arrangements in Puerto Rico and the United States.