Ithaca College

 Dr. Enrique González-Conty, Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, published the article "Building Puerto Rico's Anti-Colonial Literary Canon: Nilita Vientós Gastón's Venture with Asomante" in the Fall 2019 issue (vol. 3) of the CENTRO Journal. CENTRO is the top journal in Puerto Rican Studies in the U.S. For more information about this journal visit: https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/publications/centro-journal

After thirty years under US colonial rule, Puerto Rican intellectuals of the 1930s generation used literature to proclaim a Hispanic heritage and position themselves against US imperialism in their nation-building efforts. One of these thinkers was Nilita Vientós Gastón, lawyer and gestora cultural, who served as editor-in-chief of the Puerto Rican journal Asomante (1945-70). I argue that Asomante is crucial to understanding not only the role of literary journals in canon formation, but also to identifying cultural aspects of an anti-colonial nation-building project in Puerto Rico. In doing so, I draw from canon formation and cultural nationalism debates to highlight how Vientós Gastón launched Asomante as an alternative “Ministry of Culture.” I discuss how her editorial strategies—tracing genealogies, creating foreign connections with writers and other journals, instituting a venue for contemporary literary criticism, forming anthologies, and establishing a publishing house—constructed the island’s anti-colonial literary canon in the mid-20th century.