I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences. - Esmeralda Santiago

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

My own ancestors. I come from poor, landless peasants who left no records. And so I began to read the story of Puerto Rico, and the more I read the story the more I realized I would never find my own ancestors, but I could make my imaginary ancestors. And so the book emerges as a result of my trying to create them, to create the people that might have been.

Through her work, she has shown a remarkable commitment to maintaining the stories of Puerto Rico in boricua hands. “If we preserve our stories, then they belong to us,” she says.