Mayra Santos-Febres

Mayra Santos-Febres in 2015

Mayra Santos-Febres (born 1966) is a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, essayist, and literary critic.

Quotes

• I was born with a particular sensitivity to words. Some people are very good with math and sports… I wasn’t but I could feel words.
  • On her connection to writing in “Mayra Santos-Febres Talks Black Beauty and the Power of Words” in Los Afros Latinos (2012 May 4)

• 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.
  • On the varied experiences of Black people (as quoted in “Mayra Santos-Febres Talks Black Beauty and the Power of Words” in Los Afros Latinos; 2012 May 4)

• 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…
  • On writing about an LGBT character in her novel Sirena Selena in “An Interview with Mayra Santos-Febres” in Rollins360 (2013 Feb 27)

• 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. It is good though to learn as many techniques in creative writing as one can, so that, as a writer, one has the flexibility to work with the piece and its need.
  • On her writing preferences in “An Interview with Mayra Santos-Febres” in Rollins360 (2013 Feb 27)

Interview with Latino Book Review (2020)

• literature and arts are defined in our cultures as an activity that produces both, or this product, that is for leisure and luxury—leisure and luxury. And that is a very weird definition of artists for an Afrolatina. That is a Eurocentric view of what is art, because for us it's basically about recuperating memory and telling the stories and raising the voice and exploring an aesthetic that is devalued.

• 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.

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

• 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.

Interview

• Our stand as an island/nation/U.S. "territory"/colony is asking for a revision. Personally, I believe that we live in global times. New identities need to participate in the dialogue about civil rights, sovereignty, the need to look past nationalisms and their monolithic discourses on what constitutes citizenship.

• Afro-descendants in Puerto Rico fall between the gaps of two converging definitions of Blackness and Latinx-ness and therefore, remain invisible to both U.S. and colonial Puerto Rico's public policies. I have to say that Puerto Rican government administrations have used the U.S. current definition of "Latinx identity to further marginalize Afro-Puerto Ricans. For instance, administrations of all political denominations use the Latinx minority status to ask for aid for the whole Puerto Rican population, without precise statistical information that includes race. On the island, they use the overrated and old discourse of "mestizaje to further marginalize blackness. Most public departments refuse to use the category of "Afro-Latino or "Afro-Hispanic in their census. They do use the category "African American," which is not the identity with which many Afro-Latinxs, or Latin people of African descent identify themselves. Up to this point, we don't know, for instance, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people of African descent on the island. This racist policy does not provide us as Afro-Puerto Ricans with the necessary tools to demand government action nor changes in public policy to benefit our population.

• I have NEVER seen so many Afro-Latinxs at universities, holding Ph.Ds, and participating in public discourses about race in my life. Whenever I go, Colombia, Perú, Guatemala, México, Cuba, or Spain, France, etc., I have never in my life seen so many people of African descent sitting where decisions and discourses are being produced. I think this is a major change in the game.

Quotes about Mayra Santos-Febres

• Like many Puerto Rican scholars of my generation, I am a huge admirer of Mayra Santos-Febres. She is one of the most prolific and influential writers, critics, and teachers on the archipelago
  • Arlene Dávila Article

• (What about the work of younger writers?) RF: I have not seen much. I’ve only read Mayra Santos Febres’s books, which I think are very good, but there is not enough work to judge yet. Although I think that she is the most promising of all.
  • Rosario Ferré Interview (2002)