As a tribute to late Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferré on her birthday, remembering her formidable and inspiring work and her profound generosity, we share the words of her son, scholar Benigno Trigo (Vanderbilt University).
“National-Book-Award-finalist, Rosario Ferré (1938-2016), was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico on a day like today. Mami was a writer by profession. She wrote fiction, poetry, and essays, authoring more than twenty books, which have been translated into many languages. Her father, Luis A. Ferré, was governor of the island from 1969-1973. She held a doctorate in Spanish from the University of Maryland and an honorary doctorate from Brown University. She was an advocate for women’s rights and social justice. She brought attention to the modern history of the non-incorporated territory of Puerto Rico.
Her writing career began with the publication of the literary journal Zona. Carga y Descarga in 1972. In 1974, she won the first prize in a short story contest of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño. Her short story collection, Papeles de Pandora, was published soon afterwards, in 1976. In 1992, she was awarded the Liberatur Prize from the Frankfurt Book Fair for the German translation of her novel Maldito Amor: Kristalzuker. In 1995, she was a finalist for the National Book Award for her novel The House on the Lagoon. In 2004, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative arts. In 2007, she became an honorary member of the Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española. In 2009, she was the recipient of the Medal for Literature by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
She is recognized at Ponce’s Tricentennial Park for her contributions to the field of literature, and the library at the Ponce Museum of Art is named after her. Her archives are held by Columbia University and by Princeton University. In her Memoir (2011), she said, ‘Writing is a mystery that I still do not understand. It is a gift we receive at birth. Ideas come from the darkness where we began and where we return when we fall asleep.’”
Many thanks to Benigno Trigo for sharing this post (and photo): https://www.facebook.com/benigno.trigo.3