ABOUT THIS BOOK

An alternative view of Puerto Rico’s past, present, and future

How do we map the pathways to liberation where we have been taught to see only trauma, suffering, and lack? Melissa L. Rosario offers an alternative view of Puerto Rico, America’s oldest colony, removing readers from the framework of crisis to consider the deeper legacies of its current impasse. Beyond Disaster: Building Collective Futures in Puerto Rico is an intimate portrait, weaving insights from the author’s own life, research, and organizing work as a scholar in the diaspora who rematriated. Rosario bridges the genres of social history and memoir to unsettle the meaning of resistance and freedom, underscoring the deep wounds of colonialism while still uplifting the profound possibilities of embodied alternatives.

Beyond Disaster critiques the framework of debt and crisis by examining the psychological, emotional, and spiritual effects of colonialism. Rosario highlights key examples of organizing efforts to defend land and education against total enclosure, protecting life amid loss. This book offers a series of microhistories, vignettes, and prose poetry to foreground the daily practices necessary to anchor the ecological and political landscapes of our collective future.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

MELISSA L. ROSARIO holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and Latinx studies. She is the founder of the Center for Embodied Pedagogy and Action in Puerto Rico.

REVIEWS

“Viscerally and analytically compelling, Beyond Disaster is as committed to content as it is to surrendering to form. Melissa Rosario takes on the indomitable task of decolonizing and reinventing studies of Puerto Rico by writing freely and courageously to name and recognize emotions and to practice gestures of care that will not reduce this writing simply to text. She boldly and rightfully asks us to think beyond conventional readings and understandings of crisis, debt, and violence and confront the metaphysics of colonialism.”—Gina Athena Ulysse, author of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle — -

"Beyond Disaster merges academic, ethnographic and journalistic approaches while staying attuned to cultivating afro-indigenous queer connections to land, grounded in embodied, spiritual commitment to social change in times of global climate crisis. This sense of urgency is met here with a contagious strategic optimism, stitched together with so much heart." —Maritza Stanchich, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras

— -

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Heart Space

Introduction: Another Country

Part I: Debts: A Metaphysics of Colonialism

1. Shouldering the Crisis
2. School Closures and Student Strikes
3. Displacement and Land Privatization

Part II: Truth Wealth: Pathways toward Liberation

4. Comedores Sociales: Feeding Mutual Aid
5. Patio Taller: Crafting Afro-Diasporic Possibilities
6. La Colmena Cimarrona: Maroon Farming
7. El Hormiguero: An Okupa in Santurce
8. El Llamado: Sustaining Movements over the Long Haul
9. Retoyando Futuros Ancestrales: CEPA’s Healing Justice Practice

Conclusion: Embodying Freedom, a Praisesong

Coda: Sovereignty and Co-liberation in Times of Climate Justice
Appendix: Privileges and Responsibilities for Islanders and Diaspora Puerto Ricans
Notes
Bibliography