The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, and Politics ed. by Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, Raymundo Gonzáles (review)

The Latin Americanist, December 2015 en “Confession/Confesión,” “End of a Story/Fin de una Historia,” “Dialogue/Diálogo,” “Traces/Huellas,” o “Disconnect/Desencuentro.” La palpable traducción transcultural de los relatos de Nancy Alonso, nos deja transitar magistralmente dichos, refranes, frases repetidas, doble sentidos, marcadores culturales, marcos referenciales, coloquialismos y transculturalidades caribeñas. Disconnect/Desencuentro nos ofrece un doble armazón narrativo desde el que la escritora cubana nos incita a comprender la intimidad-separación-desdoblamiento en una realidad narrativa transfronteriza donde se asoman otros relatos amorosos, familiares, intergeneracionales y/o diaspóricos. Los encuentros y desencuentros provocados por cada una de las historias nos hacen conscientes de la carga semántica afectiva, cultural, genérica y polı́tica de mapas habaneros, geografı́as interiores, cotidianidades ficticias y no-ficticias percibidas desde la fina mirada irónica de Nancy Alonso en el quehacer artesanal de Anita Fountain. En Disconnect/Desencuentro las narraciones insospechadas se niegan a ser narraciones-espejo reafirmando el desafı́o del encuentro y desencuentro en todo proceso de traducción, adaptación y creación que en esta singular producción bilingue nos acercan a tocar la piel del texto de la reconocida escritora cubana Nancy Alonso. Magdalena Maiz-Peña Hispanic Studies/Latin American Studies Davidson College THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC READER: HISTORY, CULTURE, AND POLITICS. By Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymundo Gonzáles, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014, p. 536, $27.96. The Latin America Reader series from Duke University Press provides university students with highly readable case studies of individual Latin American nations that examine the principal issues in history and society. The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, and Politics joins the cavalcade of ten previously published volumes that explore the history, culture, and politics of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. Given the high quality and scholarly value of the books in the series to date, one can only hope that series editors Robin Kirk and Orin Starn have contracted equally qualified authors to write the remaining case studies. The book’s three editors are well-respected and highly published authors of Dominican history who have all done extensive archival research. Eric Paul Roorda is Professor of History at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. Lauren Derby is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Both scholars have written excellent case studies of Dominican history published by Duke University 82 Book Reviews Press: Roorda’s The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945 (1998) and Derby’s The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (2009). Raymundo González teaches at the Instituto Filosófico Pedro Francisco Bonó in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. González, who co-edited the ground-breaking Polı́tica, Identidad y Pensamiento Social en la República Dominicana: Siglos XIX y XX (1999), is regarded by most Dominican scholars as the island’s foremost bonocista (a scholar who studies Pedro Francisco Bonó, the father of Dominican sociology). The Dominican Republic Reader is divided into eleven units, each of which contains a variety of documents, essays, speeches, songs, poems, testimonials, short stories, and interviews, augmented by dozens of illustrations such as maps, paintings, statues, and scenes of daily Dominican life. The first eight units are presented chronologically. Starting with the arrival of the first Europeans, the editors progress through the Colonial Era, the Age of Revolution and Caudillos, and the Era of Trujillo before arriving in the Twenty-First Century. The last three units, undoubtedly the most engaging in the book, are presented thematically. The editors unveil three compelling issues in contemporary Dominican society: religious practices, popular culture, and the Dominican diaspora. The book’s format and size makes it ideal for an upper-division history course taught on a semester schedule. For those teaching on the quarter system, one could condense the early chapters to make it fit into the shorter time frame. The unit on religious practices reveals that “Dominican religious forms are an amalgam of influences drawn from a diverse range of sources. Beliefs and rituals...