Very excited that the book Post–Disaster Futures: Ruin, Repair, and Decolonial Imagination in Puerto Rico will be published by Haymarket Books on November 17, 2026. The book includes my text “Undoing Cemented Dreams” part of a project that explores cement not solely as a construction material, but as a cultural agent implicated in the shaping of Puerto Rico’s modernist aspirations and national imaginaries. Cement became central to governmental development strategies and symbolic of progress, embedding itself in both physical and ideological infrastructures. In the wake of this now-historic enterprise, the work asks: to what extent were Puerto Rico’s visions of nationhood concretized—or foreclosed—through these cemented dreams?
From the book jacket “An interdisciplinary exploration of how Puerto Ricans are redefining futurity in defiance of imperial violence and infrastructural collapse. Post-Disaster Futures brings together scholars, artists, and activists. Moving between the archipelago and its diaspora, the volume traces a collective effort to rethink what repair means when the very institutions of recovery and governance perpetuate the damage they claim to fix. Through essays, interviews, poetry, and conversations, the contributors explore themes ranging from energy justice and housing displacement to memory, migration, and artistic practice. Collectively, they show how the ruins of colonial modernity can be sources of solidarity and imagination.
Edited by Yarimar Bonilla and Isabel Guzzardo Tamargo
More info and where to get it here.
Cover image from painting by Natalia Sánchez.
Marcelo López–Dinardi 