Carmen Montañez's novel "Pelo bueno, pelo malo" acknowledges the struggle that some Caribbean individuals face in accepting their blackness. The novel integrates the union of ancestors with the living, thus reflecting the Bantu concept known as "Muntu". This Puerto Rican novel presents a deep social problem of internalized…

Historically, black women's hair has been a site where power and social relations are defined. In Puerto Rico, cultural production has been critical in perpetuating as well as in contesting the prevailing white European ideal of beauty and its impact on women's hairstyling practices. Nevertheless, the link between aesthetic preferences and the…

Detailing the integration of Spanish language teaching in an authentic setting, this article contributes to empirical research on the positive value of community-engaged learning in foreign language pedagogy. "Reading to Play, Playing to Read" is an innovative model for community-engaged teaching that combines learning goals from…

The contact between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans is targeted for study as much for its linguistic import as for its social context. Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish are considered varieties of Caribbean Spanish that differ only by a few phonological and syntactic patterns and a small number of lexical items. Although both varieties are heavily…

A lesson in the traditional music and dance of Panama and Puerto Rico focuses on the significant African influence in Hispanic culture. The lesson describes a dance, the instruments used, and the costumes worn, and explains the customs surrounding its performance. Entirely in Spanish with side glosses in English, the lesson is followed by…

This book presents resource materials for teaching the cultural heritage of the Puerto Rican student. It includes biographical sketches of outstanding figures in Puerto Rican history from colonial times to the twentieth century. It also contains descriptions of national festivities and holidays, as well as poetry representative of Puerto Rican…

Communities around the world is the theme of unit 10 of a bilingual social science strand for grade three. Inquiry strategies in both cognitive and affective domains serve as instruments to reach objectives of learning and assessment activities in kits 37-40. Each kit focuses on one of the spiraling questions of who the individual is, what his…