For decades, Juan Flores (1943\u20132014) and Miriam Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n (1951 \u2013 2020), both eminent scholars of Puerto Rican, Latino, and Afro-Latino studies, summered in Palenville, Greene County, New York. They spent their summer months at a serene and secluded property located at the foothills of Kaaterskill Clove, at the end of a dead-end street that led straight into an expansive network of trails in the Kaaterskill Wild Forest. The Kaaterskill Creek runs through the property\u2019s backyard, forming a swimming hole. The house served as an ideal writing retreat for both Flores and Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n. Away from the teaching and administrative demands of the academic year, their summer house provided a setting in which groundbreaking ideas were developed and field-shaping essays and books were drafted and revised.<\/p>\n
Their pioneering Latino-centered scholarship helped transform our understanding of the U.S. Latino experience. Flores, a prolific cultural critic and professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and New York University, is the author or editor of over ten books and many award-winning essays. His work is essential for understanding Puerto Rican diasporic and working-class cultures as well as the dynamic cross-cultural exchanges that shape Latino identities today. Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n, an indefatigable activist, writer, curator, and founding Executive Director of the Afrolatin@ Forum, was a pioneering architect of Afro-Latino studies. Through her activism and scholarship, Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n forged new spaces for studying the intersections of Blackness and Latinidad and the operating power of race within and across Latino communities.<\/p>\n
Juan Flores\u2019s parents, Angel and Kate Flores, respected scholars and translators who helped establish the field of Latin American studies, had bought the land and built the Palenville house in 1955. After a decade in Mexico and Washington, D.C., working for the Pan American Union, they had moved to New York City for academic appointments and sought a summer retreat that they could call their own. A prolific writer, professor and translator, the Puerto Rican Angel Flores is widely credited as the first to apply the term \u201cmagic realism\u201d to Latin American literature. Kate Flores, of Hungarian and Russian descent, was a feminist poet, translator, and editor who developed a novel theory of consciousness and evolution. From their home in Palenville, the Floreses corresponded with towering Latin American writers and critics like Octavio Paz and Julio Cort\u00e1zar. They also socialized with other intellectuals who summered in the area. Juan Flores remembered, for example, how figures like Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Bl\u00fccher (who also lodged in Palenville, at the nearby Chestnut Lawn House) would come over for drinks or dinner when he was a young boy.<\/p>\n
Juan Flores and Miriam Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n continued this tradition of intellectual conviviality in Palenville. Over the years, they welcomed countless friends and colleagues into their home, treating them to delicious Puerto Rican meals, scenic hikes, and bracing swims in the ice-cold swimming hole out back. But, above all, they offered lively conversation that flowed effortlessly from pressing Latino political and cultural issues to the natural beauty and rich history of the Catskills.<\/p>","sponsor":"","subtitle":"Literature & the Arts","accessinfo":"Private Property.","lede":"The former summer home of the major Latino critics and researchers Juan Flores and Miriam Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n, it was built by Juan's mother, Kate Flores, and his father, Angel Flores, himself a major critic of Latin American and world literature.","website":"","related_resources":["Angel Flores Papers (MSS 722), Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, University of New Mexico Libraries.","Flores, Angel. Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century<\/em>, H.W. Wilson (New York, NY), 1992.","Flores, Angel and Kate Flores, eds. <\/span>Defiant Muse:<\/span><\/i> Hispanic Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present<\/span><\/i>, Feminist Press (New York, NY), 1986. <\/span>","Flores, Juan. <\/span>From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity<\/span><\/i>, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1990. <\/span>","Flores, Juan.<\/span> Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity<\/span><\/i>, Arte P\u00fablico Press (Houston, TX), 1993. <\/span>","Flores, Juan.<\/span> Salsa Rising: New York Latin Music of the Sixties Generation<\/span><\/i>, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2016.<\/span>","Flores, Kate. <\/span>Relativity and Consciousness: A New Approach to Evolution<\/span><\/i>, Gordian Press (New York, NY), 1986. <\/span>","Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n, Miriam and Juan Flores, eds. <\/span>The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States<\/span><\/i>, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2010. <\/span>"],"factoids":[],"files":{"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/e8dc7af176373d60daaeebd1963275d6.jpg":{"id":9,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"The Flores and Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n House","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/e8dc7af176373d60daaeebd1963275d6.jpg","description":"Photograph of the property taken from street-level in May 2022. | Cristina P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez"},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/b0fb3b846cd650cbbe1cfb7dd6b1cb43.jpg":{"id":16,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Jean Franco in Palenville","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b0fb3b846cd650cbbe1cfb7dd6b1cb43.jpg","description":"The Latin Americanist Jean Franco, one of many visitors to the Palenville summer home of Juan Flores and Miriam Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n | Cristina P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez"}}}