Frequently Asked Questions

When did you start writing?

I began writing for publication in 1985, when my essay “Bilingual Dreamer” appeared in The Christian Science Monitor. Before that, I had written occasional essays for alumni magazines but even though they were well received, I didn’t consider myself a writer. I worked with my husband, filmmaker Frank Cantor in our company, CANTOMEDIA. My job there was to write and produce educational and documentary films that he directed. In late 1984, after the birth of our second child, I took a writing workshop with Martin Robbins, a Boston-based poet and teacher. His kind criticism and encouragement helped me to gain the confidence I needed to focus on writing personal essays that were subsequently published in newspapers like the Boston Globe and the New York Times, as well as in special interest and literary magazines. Eventually, I had my own column in my hometown weekly newspaper, the Hingham Mariner.

Why did you write your first book as a memoir?

It was not my choice to begin my literary career with a memoir. Rather, I was ‘discovered’ by Merloyd Lawrence who had her own imprint at what was then Addison-Wesley, now Perseus Publishing. She saw an essay I wrote about my mother on the pages of the Radcliffe Quarterly and asked if I had any more work like it. I showed her clippings from my newspaper columns and essays, and it was her idea that I write a book about my life. She made the suggestion even more appealing by offering me a book contract.

Why did you title your first book When I was Puerto Rican?

My first book went through many titles before I settled on When I was Puerto Rican. It was important to me that the title reflect not only what the book was about, but its emotional theme. The first draft of the book was much longer than the finished work, and it was in two parts, When I was Puerto Rican—about my early years on the island—and My American Life—about my adolescence and young womanhood. After editing, the book was much shorter, and I chose to end it just after my audition to Performing Arts High School.

I chose to keep the title in the past tense for three very important and emotionally sensitive reasons.

1. The book is about a Puerto Rican childhood that is today impossible to duplicate. I lived in a rural barrio in Toa Baja that had not yet been “modernized.” This meant that not only did we not have the amenities of running water and electricity, but because of its geography and rural character, Macún was isolated from urban Puerto Rican and North American cultures. I didn’t know much about the United States, never imagined that I would one day live there. The Puerto Rican culture I grew up in, then, was a product of its time, its place, and its local history. It was a Puerto Rican childhood uncontaminated by American culture. The ‘was’ in the title refers to the strong sense of self I had as a rural Puerto Rican.

2. The second reason for the past tense refers to the first. A few days after we arrived in Brooklyn I learned that, by virtue of being in the United States I was “Hispanic”, a word I’d never heard in Puerto Rico, and had certainly never applied to myself or to anyone I knew. Later I learned that people from Spanish speaking countries (though not Spaniards) were also called “Latinos”. It is hard to convey the terror that those two words made me feel when I was first told that I was a Hispanic, or a Latina. It was as if a label were pasted on my forehead, placed there for the benefit of others, to make it easier for them to identify me, saving them the energy to get to know me. I am from Puerto Rico, a real place with its own culture and historical perspective. There is no Hispanica, no Latinica. The words Hispanic and Latina take away from me my place of birth. The title When I was Puerto Rican, then, is a comment on the labeling that turned me into Hispanic and Latina without my knowledge or permission.

3. In the summer of 1976, shortly after my graduation from Harvard University, I returned to Puerto Rico with the intention of staying there. It had been my long delayed dream to return to the island, where most of my family had moved after years in New York. It was a shock, then, to be told by Puerto Ricans on the island that I “didn’t look” Puerto Rican or that I was not “really” Puerto Rican because I had lived in the United States for so long. It was as if, while I was gone, degrees of Puertoricanness had been established to distinguish who was 100% Puerto Rican and who wasn’t. I couldn’t understand it, didn’t know who had established those degrees or why they were important. I was proud of having retained my Puerto Rican culture as I learned to function in the United States. On the island, however, that didn’t matter. All people cared about was that I had not lived my entire life there. The title When I was Puerto Rican was a call to open discussion about those painful distinctions that have been established about who is Puerto Rican and who is not. I have found that the people most offended by the past tense in the title (and some people have been) are those most likely to deny other Puerto Ricans their identity because it’s different from their own.

Does Macún really exist?

Yes, Macún is a barrio in Toa Baja, near Candelaria and Pájaros. My uncle Cándido still lives there, and he still has a pomarrosa tree.

Where were you born? When?

I was born on Calle Linda Vista in Villa Palmeras, Santurce, Puerto Rico on May 17, 1948.

Is Raymond’s foot okay?

After many treatments and some surgery, Raymond’s foot healed completely from his injury.

Is América’s Dream based on your personal experience?

While working for William Delahunt, then District Attorney of Norfolk County, MA, I was part of a group of women who founded a shelter in Quincy for victims of domestic violence and their children. The DOVE shelter is still providing services to the community. I also wrote the original proposal and program design that funded a Family Service Unit within the District Attorney’s office, which specializes in issues of domestic violence and child abuse. The work with both agencies helped me to understand and learn more about domestic abuse, the reasons women stay with an abuser, and the cycle of violence that runs in some families.

I spent many months in Vieques, Puerto Rico during extended vacations with my husband and children. There I learned about the struggle of Viequenses to rid themselves of the U S Navy, and I sought to understand how that presence affects individuals.

When I was a young mother and took my children to the playground, I was frequently the only mother watching her own children. Most of the other women were nannies, mostly from Spanish speaking countries. In talking to them, I learned about their lives, their hopes, dreams, frustrations, and amazement at Americans’ personal lives and struggles.

América’s Dream was inspired by all these experiences, so in a way, yes, it is based on my life. But, no. While I did have some bad boyfriends, none of them were like Correa. América, Rosalinda and Correa are fictional characters. Ester is based loosely on my grandmother Tata, who manages to sneak into almost everything I write. The events in the book, other than Correa’s final fate, are stories I heard from the nannies in the park. All the nannies América meets are fictionalized real people, and their stories are true.

Your books are very personal and revealing. How did your family respond to them?

When I first began to write When I was Puerto Rican, I was worried that my parents, my sisters and brothers, would be angry with me. As a family, we don’t sit around talking about the days when we were on welfare, or about the sorrow of our stepfather’s death or about how difficult it was for Mami to take care of us with virtually no help from our fathers. But I knew that it was important to tell our story because so many newcomers to this culture, myself included, have been isolated by shame and fear of what we call “el que dirán”—what others will say about us. I trusted that if I told the truth as I saw it, my family would understand and support my right to speak. They have encouraged and inspired me at every step, even when they have disagreed with my version of events.

It has been uncomfortable for them sometimes, to be identified with my work. My brother Raymond, for example, was asked to take off his shoe by a skeptical reader looking for scars that would prove that his accident was not my invention. My mother overheard a co-worker say: “If that were my daughter, I wouldn’t allow her to write those things.” Each of my siblings, and my parents, have stories about how total strangers have responded to them because of my work. I’m proud of how generous and mature they have been in handling their notoriety.

How do you respond to critics who say your books confirm stereotypes about Puerto Ricans?

The funny thing about critics is that you don’t usually get a chance to respond to them. If given the chance, however, I tell them that when you write memoir, you should not rewrite history. I would have loved it if my parents had been so wealthy that they gave me a convertible for my sixteenth birthday, but that was not my life. It wasn’t, in fact, the life of anyone I knew, except for the characters in ‘Archie’ comic books.

Just because someone fits the stereotypes doesn’t mean that person doesn’t exist. What’s important is not that our household was like the Puerto Rican stereotype of a large family headed by a single mother who has to resort to welfare. It’s more important to realize that none of us, not one of my ten sisters and brothers, not I, not my parents, can be said to be that stereotype now. We are an example of people who have not let the stereotypes rule our lives. We rose above them, and refuse to let them define who we are.

I liked your first three memoirs, but you left me hanging! Are you working on a sequel?

I am working on a sequel to The Turkish Lover, but it will be a couple of years before it’s ready.

Who is your favorite author? What do you like to read? Can you recommend other books by Latino authors?

Books are the decoration of my life. They are lined up on shelves in my office, in the dining room and hallways of my house, in drawers in the kitchen, on the coffee tables in the living room. And of course, the bedside tables are stacked with books waiting to be read, with ragged slips of paper marking the pages where I stopped before drifting off to sleep.

It’s difficult to say who my favorite author is because, if I’m reading something, then that author is my current favorite. In addition to the books on shelves around my house, there are magazines on the coffee tables, and there is always a book in my car, audio books in my iPod and eBooks in my electronic handheld device.  

Mine is an eclectic reading list, but somehow I manage to keep all the storylines together, even if it sometimes means re-reading a couple of pages or rewinding the audio. I listen to audiobooks while I drive or during my daily walks. I read while waiting on hold or waiting on line. I read when I eat alone at home or in restaurants. I read before I fall asleep. I’ve always read like this, many things at once, in English or Spanish. Sometimes it will take me months to finish a book.

The two anthologies I co-edited with Joie Davidow, Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share their Holiday Memories and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember their Mothers (both published by Knopf and available in English and in Spanish editions) are a wonderful introduction to some of the leading Latino authors writing today. If you like their essays, poems and stories in the anthologies, you can also look for their other books at your local or online retailers.

To keep you up to date on who my current favorite authors are,  I will update my reading and recommended list at the bottom of the homepage of this site frequently.

Do you teach? Do you ever visit schools or colleges?

I do not hold a teaching appointment. Paid public appearances such as lectures, convocations and keynote addresses support my writing. I do several pro bono presentations a year through organizations I volunteer with or through the PEN American Center’s Writers and Readers program.

RECENT RELEASES
The Turkish Lover
El amante turco

Also, look for my children’s books
A Doll for Navidades
Una muñeca para el día de Reyes

Writing a Life is a one-hour documentary about the power of words to transform lives. Esmeralda’s family life, work ethic, and creative process are revealed in this intimate film portrait.


Read press release

Watch the trailer

For more information:

Frank Cantor

914/774-0330

SPANISH AUDIOBOOKS NOW AVAILABLE

www.recordedbooks.com

Cuando era puertorriqueña
Casi una mujer

El amante turco