Eating Puerto Rico

“A magnificent book. Ortiz provides a fascinating anthropological, historical, and sociological study of Puerto Rican culture articulated through the foods consumed historically on the island. But the book is about much more than that. It is a history of the deep culture of Puerto Ricans since the Spanish conquest, addressing race, ethnicity, and class.”—César J. Ayala, coauthor of Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898

“Ortíz employs an impressive range of sources and has creatively put together a multidisciplinary methodological apparatus to meet the challenge of historicizing symbolic practices such as taste, food preferences, and national belonging. . . . An innovative introduction to the histories of colonialism, struggle, and cultural hybridization that is useful in the classroom and beyond.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

“Ortíz’s primary research is as impressive as his mastery of relevant secondary literature, and he provides a model for how best to exploit the archives to construct his food history.”—Reviews in American History

“A feast for the mind . . . highly readable and frequently entertaining.”—Journal of Latin American Geography

“The book is an important contribution to the social and cultural history of the Caribbean and may also be fruitful as a primary source for studies of colonialism, Third World poverty, and underdevelopment.” — The Historian

“Ortíz succeeds in demythologizing the basic staples of Puerto Rican cuisine by explaining how rice, bananas, cornmeal, codfish, beef, and pork arrived on the island and how they became as popular as they did, [and] also skillfully deconstructs the category of 'Puerto Rican' into multiple populations defined by gender, rural vs. urban, literacy and education levels, laboring class, immigrant or island-born, government vs. private sector, and colonizer or colonized, among others.” —American Historical Review

“Well translated. . . . Recommended. All levels/libraries.”—CHOICE

“A great resource for scholars focusing on food in the Caribbean.”—Food, Culture, and Society

“Charming and learned . . . [but] also bittersweet. . . . One ends up wondering whether, finally, the question has to be: 'Who really determines what choices are available?'”—Sidney W. Mintz, Gastronomica

“Ortíz is a man dedicated to understanding and exploring the precise spot where food and history intersect en la isla del encanto.” —NBC Latino