SOURCE: An interview with Rosario Ferré, in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1993, pp. 83–103.

In the following interview, originally conducted in June, 1991, Ferré discusses her personal background and the nature of her writings, touching on such concerns as the advantages and difficulties of writing about the homeland she left; the role of anger and magic in her work and in Latin American literature in general; the significance of race, class, and gender as a Puerto Rican woman writer; the art of translating fiction; the relationship between autobiography and fiction; and Puerto Rican culture and politics.

In 1974, Puerto Rican artist Francisco Rodón displayed a portrait of writer Rosario Ferré, surrounded by flames and wearing newsprint. Entitled Andromeda, the painting invokes the mythological daughter sacrificed for her mother's follies and, with her father's complicity, put on a rocky ledge to be devoured by a...