“Tuning Out Blackness offers an astute and very well informed analysis of Puerto Rico’s unique ‘racial’ programming, which in turn provides a valuable look at the deep ambivalence at the heart of the country’s sense of national identity in the shadow of U. S. ideological and cultural power.”-Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity
“This book not only provides a cultural history of ‘blackness’ in Puerto Rican television, it also locates Puerto Rico as a critical blind spot in both Latin American and U. S. television studies, one that can offer new insights into the televisual representation of race, family, and nation.”-Chon Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema
“[M]eticulously researched. . . . Rivero offers a well-written chronology of the ever-changing function of ‘blackness’ and its relationship to the ‘la gran familia puertoriqueÑa discourse’ (nationalist discourse) that is perpetually being rearticulated on Puerto Rico. . . . I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in issues related to popular culture and race and ethnicity.”
- Amanda V. Branker (Journal of American Ethnic History) “This book contributes a powerful analysis of the dialectics that forge discourses on race and nation in local Puerto Rican televisual productions. . . . Rivero’s book is a well-documented cultural reading of television as an important force in the shaping of localized forms of collective social imagination. This study represents a milestone in media research in Puerto Rico mainly because Rivero’s analysis is articulated from the inside, not the outside.”
- Mirerza González-Vélez (Journal of Communication Inquiry) “Yeidy Rivero’s Tuning Out Blackness provides a well documented cultural history of “blackness” in Puerto Rican television. . . . [S]he makes excellent use of participant observation, interviews, archival research, and textual analysis to critically analyze representations of race in local Puerto Rican television.”
- Dwight E. Brooks (Journalism History) "Ground-breaking and complex. . . . Provocative. . . . A rich, engaging, vital contribution to television history and popular culture studies, Puerto Rican and Latino studies, and racial and ethnic studies. Highly recommended."
- S.A. Vega Garcia (Choice)
