Famous Puerto Rican writers

Famous Puerto Rican writers of the Diaspora and emerging voices are featured in Diasporic Journeys.

“Diasporic Journeys”: The Anthology that Explores Puerto Rican Literature Beyond the Island. The book features interviews with Boricua writers based in the United States, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Giannina Braschi, and Quiara Alegría Hudes.

By Carmen Dolores Hernández

Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States. Carmen Haydée Rivera, ed. (New York: Centro Press, 2023). The anthology features the most famous Puerto Rican writers today alongside emerging voices.

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BOOK REVIEW (auto translated from the Spanish)

Interviews with writers provide readers of their works access not only to the authors, but to the creative processes of their writing. They open paths and uncover motivations that generally do not appear in either reviews or literary studies. In this book, Carmen Haydée Rivera presents thirteen writers who are part of our diaspora and whose work has been mostly published and disseminated in the United States. In doing so, she proposes a new vision of Puerto Rican literature in terms of themes, geographies, styles, and perspectives.

There are thirteen interviewees: Giannina Braschi, Rodney Morales, Luisita López Torregrosa, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Javier Avila, José Luis Torres-Padilla (JL Torres), Aya de León, María Teresa Fernández (Mariposa Fernandez), Caridad De La Luz (“La Bruja”), Migdalia Cruz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Roque Raquel Salas Rivera. Six were born here; some emigrated as children with their families, and others left later. Of the six who were born in the United States, the majority have two Puerto Rican parents (Aya de León has only one, and the parents of María Teresa Fernández, “Mariposa,” are first-generation Boricuas born in the US). Rodney Morales, born in Hawaii, had three Puerto Rican grandparents.

Puerto Rico is, for everyone, a constant reference, although each person connects with the Island in a different way: whether by writing about it, interpreting it, or recreating its traditions. Some write in English, others in Spanish: in one language or another, however, their work refers to a fundamental fact in our history: the migratory experience. Among them are poets, storytellers, playwrights, and scholars. Some privilege “performance,” that is, the staging of the spoken word.

There are those who enjoy wide recognition: Giannina Braschi, Lin-Manuel Miranda; others are not yet very well known: José Luis Torres-Padilla, Aya de León, Migdalia Cruz.

The interviewer inquires about the migratory experience of each one; the answers provide a wide diversity. There is also diversity in their individual affiliations with literary tradition, which can encompass what is Puerto Rican, but also what is Latino in general, what is American, and what is universal. In any case, the interviews prove particularly useful for understanding the wonderful breadth of our literature and the effects of Puerto Rican culture on those who live it filtered by distance in time and space.

The interview with Rodney Morales, for example, presents the case of a Hawaiian of Puerto Rican descent on his mother’s side (and also, in part, on his father’s side) who connects with the saga of the Puerto Ricans displaced to that archipelago at the beginning of the 20th century. His connection to Puerto Rico is firm, though distant: it rests on the stories of his ancestors. “I think of Puerto Rico as a land populated by a wonderful people and even though I grew up a world away, that is still my people…”

The openings that the book offers into the work of each interviewee are rewarding. Giannina Braschi, for example, has managed to elevate the particular conflict of the Puerto Rican nation to a universal plane through her visionary perspective. Luisita López Torregrosa, a renowned journalist, departs in her memoirs from the stereotypes associated with Puerto Ricans. The professorial careers of Larry La Fountain and José Luis Torres-Padilla in the US have opened novel breakthroughs in Puerto Rican literary studies: in the field of queer literature, in La Fountain’s case, or regarding the literary beginnings of the diaspora, in the second. Both Aya de León, as well as “Mariposa,” “La Bruja,” and Migdalia Cruz, on the other hand, began their careers as “performers,” although the former, settled on the West Coast of the US, has moved away from it to write crime novels starring Latinas and published under the collective title of “The Justice Hustlers.”

FAMOUS PUERTO RICAN AUTHORS

The most famous of all is perhaps Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose musical works, “In the Heights” (on which another of the interviewees, Quiara Alegría Hudes, collaborated) and “Hamilton,” were highly acclaimed. His connection with Puerto Rico began with his parents and continued with his extended family on the Island. “Puerto Rico means everything to me,” he says. “It is our strongest root.”

By expanding the geographical boundaries of Puerto Rican literature, this book confronts us with an extra-insular literary experience, defined poetically by María Teresa Fernández (“Mariposa”) in her “Ode to the Diasporican”: “I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico. / Puerto Rico was born in me.”

To read this Book Review in the Spanish original, click here to Nuevo Dia (ENDI):

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Famous Puerto Rican writers at The Bookmark — Elidio La Torre Lagares, Giannina Braschi, Carmen Haydée Rivera at The Bookmark

Resources on Puerto Rican Literature

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FAMOUS PUERTO RICAN AUTHORS

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