Eulogy for Juan Flores (2014)

We are indebted to Juan Flores’s teaching and mentoring,  to his widely quoted books Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (1992) or  From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (2000).  We owe much  to his untiring efforts, delving into archives, libraries and sound recordings, and into the vast storehouse of the memory of friends and collaborators.   We admire the ways  he delineated and at times defiantly transformed the contours of what we know today as diasporic and Latino cultural studies.  He spent the last years of his life with Miriam Jiménez passionately building a solid foundation for Afro-Latin@ Studies.  Together they created  a public space and a compelling Reader  in order to  encourage open discussion and  rethinking of the racial experience of Latinos, challenging embedded racism and racial categories.

Díaz-Quiñones, Arcadio. “Eulogy for Juan Flores.” Memorial Service, Afrolatin@ Forum, Kimmel Center, New York U, 20 Dec. 2014.