I prefer novels. However, I think that the theme of the piece determines its form. Some texts work better in poetry than in essay or stories or plays… - Mayra Santos-Febres

I do not see this novel as solely dealing with LGBT issues. I see Sirena as a metaphoric representation of the whole Caribbean. The fact that s/he is a transvestite is just a fact. Basically, I did what Flaubert did with Emma Bovary. He talked about his society through the character of a woman—an adulterous woman…

that's what artists are. We are the voices, and the memory, and the explorers of an aesthetic, and a sensibility, and a philosophy that has been silenced and devalued.

I think that art and especially literature is really good at teaching people how to be compassionate and how to put yourself, put themselves, in other people's shoes and trying to bridge the unbridgeable, which is to live through other people's perception. It gifts the eyes of the beholder, not the eyes of the writer, and that is a wonderful gift. That is absolutely wonderful—and that books—it's okay if they entertain, it's okay if they teach—but what they teach in a very profound level is to be human.