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Puerto Rico 1965-1990: A Quarter Century of Highlights, Hope, Status and Stasis
by Robert Friedman
friedmanro@gmail.com
Through his own newspaper articles and recollections of the time, Robert Friedman shows readers in this vivid and nostalgic memoir what it was like living in Puerto Rico from the mid-1960s through the 1970s and 1980s, the years he spent there as a journalist for the San Juan Star. The book is far from an encompassing history, but rather a personal timeline of the era, a journalist’s-eye view of life in the U.S. quasi-colony, whose island-born residents are U.S. citizens but who do not have all the rights of fellow citizens living in the States.
Friedman gives readers an understanding of the humane, colorful, and difficult life lived by the island’s residents, as it was when he was there, and which, from all accounts, remains the same today. While much of the material deals with the U.S. - Puerto Rico relationship —political, social, and economic — also featured are portraits of island visitors over those years, such as Leonard Bernstein, Muhammed Ali and Norman Mailer, who give, among other things, their take on Puerto Rican and "Americano" life on the island and in the states. The author presents in this book both the first draft of history, as good journalism is called, and a vivid, human picture of the Caribbean Island and its people.
Robert Friedman was born and raised in the Bronx, NY. He spent more than 20 years living in Puerto Rico and working as a reporter for the English-language San Juan Star, special correspondent for the New York Daily News, an as a Washington correspondent for the Puerto Rico newspaper.
“Friedman's stories are the more immediate glimpses of life on the island as seen by a Bronx ‘ex-pat’ who shares the absurdities, the disappointments, the joys, and frustrations with the fondness of one who chose to make it his home for many years… It is also a reflection of how the Island is connected to world events.”
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Other Books by Bob Friedman
 | Ulysses in San Juan, the third and concluding novel follows the relationship between Wolf, a concentration camp survivor who has come to Puerto Rico to try to build a new life, and Carmen, a drug addict. Set in 1980, the novel takes the reader on a trip into the San Juan underworld, as well as to other island sites, to meet crooked and upright and deeply human characters. The survival theme is extended to Stevie Diaz, a young Newyorican who has recently returned to the island and is searching, through his writing, to find out where he is truly at. Ulysses in San Juan |
 | The Defining Sea, book two of the Puerto Rico Trilogy, is a coming-of-age novel that follows the misadventures of Richie Peréz, a 20-year-old University of Puerto Rico student. Richie’s girlfriend is killed by police during a campus protest against the Navy for its decades-long bombing exercises on the offshore Puerto Rico island of Vieques. In order to raise money for a scholarship in her name, Richie becomes a drug runner between the island and the states, learning hard truths along the way about life, love and loss. Editor’s note: The second book in the trilogy was published earlier, then rewritten somewhat and had its title changed from The Surrounding Sea to The Defining Sea. The Defining Sea |
 | In the first book, The Odyssey of Pablo Camino, a well-known Puerto Rican artist goes on a search for the truth of the possible murderous past of his dead father, Cornelius Rhodes, an Americano doctor sent to the island for research. The doctor claimed in a letter that he purposely killed eight of his patients because of his disdain for the “natives.” Personal obsessions and public events collide as the novel’s characters grapple with lies, false identities, puzzling connections, U.S. wars and colonialism. Editor’s note: The first book in the trilogy was published earlier, then rewritten somewhat and had its title changed. The Odyssey of Pablo Camino was previously titled called Shadow of the Father. The Odyssey of Pablo Camino |
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