"Responding to the fact that the experiences of Puerto Rican soldiers have been almost entirely absent from mainstream media for decades, Manuel Avilés-Santiago's groundbreaking study explores how they self-represent themselves and their role in the War on Terror via social media. This much-needed investigation is thoroughly engaging, important, and enlightening." - Charles Ramírez Berg, Joe M. Dealey, Sr. Professor, Media Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, USA"Manuel Avilés-Santiago's research has evolved from his keen observations as a youngster of the robust military contributions of his own family, to discovering a curious absence of a Puerto Rican presence in dominant representations of U.S. wars, to finally finding the Puerto Rican serviceman self-representations on social media networks, with particular attention to their racial and colonial subjectivity. Avilés-Santiago succeeds in carefully deconstructing and analyzing the self-created representations, and comparing them with what (few) representations have been made by the dominant media. Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship provides a window into the s the younger generations' self-expression - and opens up major areas still ripe for further study. This work is an insightful and carefully constructed project, a culmination of a lifetime of observations and probing - begun when he was a mere child." - Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, Director, Voces Oral History Project, University ofTexas at Austin, USA
