copyright 1966; by Oscar Lewis; Random House publishers, New York; hardbound; English language; very good condition with unmarked pages; blue boards very good with very minor wear; no dust jacket.
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This enormous volume is presented as only the first of a series on Puerto Rican slum families in San Juan and New York. It will form an important part of the literature building up on the Puerto Rican community in New York City and its background in Puerto Rico, and as part of this literature it bears a number of unique features. To begin with, it is the first study that follows the same individuals in their migration to and from New York City. Second, it applies the two techniques that Oscar Lewis used with such success in Five Families and The Children of Sanchez; here both techniques are combined and further developed, so that we follow individuals first through a typical day in their lives, and then they are allowed to speak and tell the story of their lives. Once again, one is amazed at the openness, fluency, and intimacy of their recitals—and in this case, one’s admiration for Professor Lewis’s gifts must be all the greater for he had less time to become acquainted with and gain the confidence of the Rios family than he had with his Mexican subjects. Third, Professor Lewis has to a greater extent than in his Mexican volumes tried to encompass more of the society and culture, by including representatives of four generations, in four rather different kinds of geographical and social settings (rural Puerto Rico, San Juan, rural areas of the United States in which Puerto Ricans engage in agricultural work, and New York City); in addition, he gives us the direct stories of sixteen individuals, grouped in five major households (Fernanda’s, and those of three daughters and one son) and a number of minor ones. Finally, this is yet another, and undoubtedly a major, contribution to the discussion of the “culture of poverty.”
Después de "Antropología de la pobreza", "Los hijos de Sanchez" y "Pedro Martinez", que constituyen estudios ejemplares de la cultura de la pobreza en la ciudad y en el campo mexicanos, Lewis nos ofrece en "La Vida" el libro más dramático y revelador que se haya escrito sobre la existencia de los desheredados en un país latinoamericano cuyas estructuras sociales, económicas y políticas han sido conformadas por singulares circunstancias históricas.