LISA G. MATERSON

Radical Solidarity
Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship,
and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence

🎉Newly Published🎉
University of North Carolina Press

Honorable Mention,
2025 Elsa Goveia Book Prize, Association of Caribbean Historians

Featured in Ms. Magazine's
"Reads for the Rest of Us"

&

Unsung History podcast

Lisa Materson has drawn on an impressive array and quantity of resources that makes for an extremely moving and inspiring read. It is an excellent and important project."— Margaret Power, author of Solidarity across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-imperialism

"In this stunning biography of Ruth Reynolds, a lifelong pacifist with deep roots in the Midwest, Lisa Materson introduces us not only to one of the twentieth century 's most devoted, and unlikely, champions of Puerto Rican independence but also to the revelatory concept of radical solidarity. Neither political imprisonment nor the turn to violence on the part of some of her closest friends dislodged Reynolds's commitment to exposing the colonial subjugation of Puerto Rico. Bringing a feminist lens to a lifetime of anti-imperialist politics, Materson brilliantly offers Reynolds's life as a master lesson in allyship while likewise bringing attention to a too-long-overlooked chapter of American empire."
--Lorena Oropeza, author of The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement

"Materson's discussion of Reynolds's life helps us understand the complexities of solidarity activism as well as the ways that Puerto Ricans and their allies have fought for liberation from colonial rule. Well written and engaging, the book stands to make a major contribution to the field." — Marisol LeBrón, author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

"Materson crafts a vivid tale from newspapers, government documents, interviews, and memoirs. Radical Solidarity is not simply a biography but meditates on the relationships between Reynolds and the radical activism of pro-independence Puerto Rican activists, situating them within the wider global anti-imperialist struggle, beyond Reynolds’ 1989 death into the present day." — Honorable Mention, 2025 Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH)