My intention is to write things that can convey a vision of the memory lost, of a way of living in the world. - Mayra Santos-Febres

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.

what is sold as mainstream literature, I don't like it very much—very simplified, industrialized, Dan Brown stuff. I don't want to write like that.

People believe that black people live the same way everywhere and that is not true. White people don’t live the same way everywhere, even if you have the same cultural references. Take music. Rap, of course, black rappers don’t live the same way everywhere. There are black rappers in Africa, black rappers in France, black rappers in the U.S. and there are black rappers in the Caribbean. I wanted people to see the way in which that music became a means of expression of a reality, which is at the same time both global and local.