Esmeralda Santiago

How did you become a writer? My writing career began as a proposal writer for grass-roots organizations and charities in Boston. The potential funders often commented my proposals included human interest stories that supported the statistics, budgets, mission and financial statements. Around that time, my husband and I founded a documentary film company, where I learned how to write narrations and script educational films. It was a slow process of learning and accepting writing was my strength: telling stories in my second language where, at the time, I had a limited but enthusiastic audience.

I explored writing personal essays, taking a chance at publication with magazines and newspapers. Merloyd Lawrence, an editor at an educational publishing house, had her own imprint, and after reading one of my essays, queried me. She liked what she’d read and wondered whether I had more essays like the one in the Radcliffe alumni magazine. I showed up at her office with clippings from the mélange of publications where my essays and opinions had appeared. She suggested I write a memoir about my life as a rural Puerto Rican migrant to New York City. She nurtured me through the writing, always compassionate, encouraging and supportive. My first memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, was published under her care and imprint. Thirty years later, it’s still taught in schools and colleges, has been translated into several languages, and is being updated in 2024 with prologues by prominent writers and a new Reader’s Guide.

Once that book was in the world, I dedicated to writing full-time. As of 2023, I’ve written three memoirs, three novels, have co-edited two Latine anthologies with Joie Davidow, wrote the story for an illustrated children’s book, a radio play, a film version of my second memoir for Masterpiece Theatre, and countless personal essays and opinion pieces. At the moment, I have a finished novel at my agent’s, and am halfway through another. As I get older, time compresses. I feel as if I were on a race track, slogging toward an invisible finish line.

Name your writing influences. My earliest literary influences were Puerto Rican poets Luis Muñoz Rivera, Julia de Burgos, lyricists Bobby Capó, Tite Curet, Rafael Hernandez, Mirta Silva and Silvia Rexach, Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, Mexican poet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Nicaraguan Ruben Darío, Spanish authors Juan Ramón Jiménez, Corín Tellado and Federico Garcia Lorca.

I learned English by reading, and my earliest influences in that language were lyricists Cole Porter, and authors Langston Hughes, Carson McCullers, an untold number of Harlequin romance writers, Archie comic books dialogue-bubble writers, and newspaper writers.

When and where do you write? Public speaking, lectures and keynote addresses support my writing, so I’m frequently on the road. I write when I can in airports, planes, hotel rooms. Between trips, I work in my home office, and, when I can manage it, I take extended writing retreats in friends’ guest houses and AirBnBs. I carry an A.5 notebook and fountain pen but have written an entire essay in a Japanese restaurant, in very small print, on the inside of an opened chopstick envelope, and another on the back of a greeting card I’d plucked from my mailbox as I left earlier that day.

I ruminate for days, weeks, months, or years before setting anything down on 3x2.5” index cards. The cards are big enough to hold one idea, theme, question, or piece of dialogue. Once I have enough of them, I organize them on my wall. I assign colors to each character so I can track the plot along a timeline. I draw  topographical maps of the neighborhoods where my characters live, and floor plans of their homes. If they have a striking physical feature, like Conciencia la jorobá, a character in my second novel, Conquistadora, I draw a portrait. Admittedly, I’m not much of an artist, but they give me a sense of what I’m after during the outlining phase.

Once it seems a book is gelling, I number it. For example, Las Madres is N.4 (novel #4). N.3 hasn’t been published yet, but it was written long before N.4. I create a journal for each new book where I scribble ideas, research leads, quotes, complaints about the progress, emotional outbursts, frustrations, and insecurities about that particular book.

I usually work on more than one book at a time so that when I reach a wall, I don’t fret. There’s another book in progress that needs my attention.

What are you working on now? I’m working on N.5, a novel based on interviews with Puerto Rican elders who told me fantastic stories about the early 20th century on the island and in the US.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? When I reach a brick wall with one of the books, I open another in-progress work. I also find a visit to a museum clears my head and inspires me by the creative choices of other artists. And of course, when I’m not writing for whatever reason, there’s the endless hole of internet research.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? When I began my writing career, I had a conversation with the poet Martin Robbins. I worried I might be spending hours, days, weeks on stories about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans when, in my experience in the USA, no one cares about us. “But you do,” he said. That’s when my writing career really started.

What’s your advice to new writers? Read everything you can get your hands on. You will likely write stories you’d like to read, so you need to be clear about what moves and interests you.

Esmeralda Santiago is the author of three acclaimed memoirs: When I Was Puerto Rican, Almost a Woman, and The Turkish Lover. She’s also a novelist: América's Dream, Conquistadora, and her most recent, Las Madres. She can be reached at EsmeraldaSantiago.com.