In Search of Respect

by

Philippe Bourgois

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A portmanteau combining the words “New York” and “Puerto Rican,” which refers to the large community of Puerto Rican-descended people who live or have roots in New York City. Most of the people Bourgois studies are Nuyoricans.

Nuyorican Quotes in In Search of Respect

The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Nuyorican or refer to Nuyorican. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Primo, Benzie, Maria, and everyone else around that night had never been tête-a-tête with a friendly white before, so it was with a sense of relief that they saw I hung out with them out of genuine interest rather than to obtain drugs or engage in some other act of perdición. The only whites they had ever seen at such close quarters had been school principals, policemen, parole officers, and angry bosses. Even their schoolteachers and social workers were largely African-American and Puerto Rican. Despite his obvious fear, Primo could not hide his curiosity. As he confided in me several months later, he had always wanted a chance to “conversate” with an actual live representative of mainstream, “drug-free” white America.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker), Primo, Benzie, Maria
Page Number: Chapter 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

To summarize, New York-born Puerto Ricans are the descendants of an uprooted people in the midst of a marathon sprint through economic history. In diverse permutations, over the past two or three generations their parents and grandparents went: (1) from semisubsistence peasants on private hillside plots or local haciendas; (2) to agricultural laborers on foreign-owned, capital-intensive agro-export plantations; (3) to factory workers in export-platform shantytowns; (4) to sweatshop workers in ghetto tenements; (5) to service sector employees in high-rise inner-city housing projects; (6) to underground economy entrepreneurs on the street. Primo captured the pathos of these macrostructural dislocations when I asked him why he sometimes called himself a jíbaro:

Primo: My father was a factory worker. It says so on my birth certificate, but he came to New York as a sugarcane cutter. Shit! I don’t care; fuck it! I ’m just a jíbaro. I speak jíbaro Spanish. Hablo como jíbaro [I speak like a jíbaro].

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker), Primo (speaker)
Related Symbols: Jíbaro
Page Number: Chapter 251-2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

It’s like they hear my voice, and they stop…There’s a silence on the other end of the line.

Everyone keeps asking me what race I am. Yeah, they say, like, ‘Where’re you from with that name?’ Because they hear that Puerto Rican accent. And I just tell them that I'm Nuyorican. I hate that.

Related Characters: Primo (speaker), Philippe Bourgois
Page Number: Chapter 4136
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Primo’s mother, however, is dissatisfied with the autonomy she “gained” by uprooting herself to New York. Part of that dissatisfaction is related to the individual isolation that pervades much of the U.S. urban experience. It also stems from being forced to define rights and accomplishments in individualistic terms. She longs for the women/family/community solidarity of her hometown plantation village in Puerto Rico.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker), Primo’s Mother
Page Number: Chapter 6241-2
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire In Search of Respect LitChart as a printable PDF.
In Search of Respect PDF

Nuyorican Term Timeline in In Search of Respect

The timeline below shows where the term Nuyorican appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Violating Apartheid In the United States
Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon
The Crack Trade and the Underground Economy Theme Icon
...a spy, either for the government or for aliens from “Mars or something.” (For many Nuyoricans, dreams are seen as capturing hidden truths.) (full context)
Poverty, History, and Public Policy Theme Icon
Street Culture and Drug Use  Theme Icon
In “African American/Puerto Rican Relations on the Street,” Bourgois explains that his Nuyorican friends in El Barrio, even though whites would see many of them as black, are... (full context)
Chapter 2: A Street History of El Barrio
Poverty, History, and Public Policy Theme Icon
In “Confronting Individual Responsibility on the Street,” Bourgois contrasts his academic take on Nuyorican hardship with the fact that history does not exonerate individuals on the ground for “impos[ing]... (full context)
Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon
Poverty, History, and Public Policy Theme Icon
Street Culture and Drug Use  Theme Icon
...and Helen Levitt, the hit song “A Rose in Spanish Harlem,” and most importantly “the Nuyorican literary genre” that has won global acclaim. (full context)
Chapter 8: Vulnerable Fathers
The Crack Trade and the Underground Economy Theme Icon
Street Culture and Drug Use  Theme Icon
Gender Roles and Family Violence Theme Icon
...on “the omnipotent pater familias,” a respected man who ran the family in every way, Nuyoricans more commonly receive respect and protection from anyone. Like their ancestors, however, Nuyoricans continue to... (full context)