Michael Staudenmaier, "White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago" (UNC Press, 2026)

Independent historian Michael Staudenmaier joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book about “becoming Puerto Rican” in Chicago. Staudenmaier’s book, White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), describes how generations of Puerto Rican organizers and activists, facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalization in the postwar United States, drew on competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in one of America’s most segregated cities. Highlights include: A description of the historical process of “becoming Puerto Rican” as a racial project; How class differences between activists and ordinary Puerto Ricans shaped distinct experiences of “becoming Puerto Rican”; How the gendered experience of migration led one woman to collaborate with the FBI; The effect of the 1966 Division Street Riot on Puerto Rican identity; The rise of “panethnic Latinidad” and its possible futures. Michael Staudenmaier is an independent historian and serves on the Board of Directors of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in Chicago. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.