La Vida: A Puertan Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. By Oscar Lewis. Random House ( 1966). 669 pp.
2.
See the reviews, respectively, of Michael Harrington, New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1966, p. 1; Rev. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, America , December 10, 1966, p. 778; and Nathan Glazer, Commentary, February, 1967, p. 83. See also the negative sentiments in the review by Joseph Monserrat, "A Puerto Rican Family," Natural History (April 1967).
3.
See the description of Soledad's relationship with Benedecto as an illustration of the pervasive luridity, pp. 217 ff.
4.
cf. Michael Harrington's definition of the "culture of poverty" in his The Other America (1961). See also Elizabeth Herzog , "Some Assumptions About the Poor." The Social Service Review, December 1963, pp. 389-402; and Nathan Glazer, loc. cit., supra. Professor Lewis is not without historical predecessors who have attempted to fashion a viable theory out of the poignant evocations and delineations of human misery: Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861-62) is an analagous tableau; and so is the literary and sociological canon of Mid-Victorian England.
5.
See particularly, Dorothy D. Bourne and James R. Bourne, Thirty Years of Change in Puerto Rico (New York: Frederick A. Praeger1966) ; and The Puerto Rican Community Development Project: Un Proyecto Puertorriqueño De Ayuda Mutua Para El Desarrollo De La Comunidad (New York: The Puerto Rican Forum1964).
6.
"Most of our children are brought up in homes where the language and culture is still mostly shaped along the way of life parents lived in Puerto Rico. This is good and positive and it has to be so because parents themselves cannot transmit what they do not know, but here is where the school enters as the institution that will help transmit the new culture into a child's life, and for that matter into the home as a whole. We pledge our support in all aspects where community support will be needed." Statement of Carmen Dinos (Supervisor of the Education Program of the Migration Division of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) before the Board of Education of New York City, March 11, 1966. See also, F. Cordasco , "Puerto Rican Pupils and American Education ," School and Society, vol. 95 (February 18, 1967), pp. 116-119.
7.
"Ricardo Sanchez came from where the sugar cane is higher than a man to the plaza in old San Juan where the buses marked Aero-puerto stop. He came with his wife and two daughters and three suitcases and a paper bag and the promise from a brother in Harlem, New York, that there was work to be found in fabrica. The work in the sugar cane was over for the season and Ricardo had found nothing else. The government would pay him $7 every two weeks for thirteen weeks before the season began again, and then with the season he would get $3.60 a day for eight hours in the sun. He had done it before, as his fathers had done it but this time he told himself he wanted something more. 'It is,' he said, 'no good to be poor.' " Dan Wakefield, Island in the City. The World of Spanish Harlem (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), p. 23.
