Dahlma Says

“I write first and foremost because the stories I grew up reading in school bore no resemblance to world of my family and my community. Those stories did not tell about the way the sun fell on my grandmother’s hands as she handed me my fresh bread and butter breakfast every morning or the smell on my abuelo’s skin when he came home from the cane fields. Nowhere did I see my family’s many shades of brown complexions or the sound of my mother’s voice when she called me mamita. I write because those images of my life will not allow me to be silent. I write because somewhere down the road, I’d like a little black Puerto Rican girl just like me to find herself in the world of American letters.”

 

Dahlma Llanos Figueroa quoted in KWELI