Rosario Ferré (September 28, 1938 – February 18, 2016) was a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist.

Quotes

• …Feminine literature is much more subversive than the literature of the men because women often dare to delve into prohibited areas bordering the irrational and the mad, areas dealing with love and death, areas which in our rational, productive, and utilitarian society become dangerous when one acknowledges their existence.
  • On the difference between masculine and feminine literature (as quoted in “ROSARIO FERRE: THE VANGUARD OF PUERTO RICAN FEMINIST LITERATURE”)

• …there should be an absolute identification between the individual's experience and the writer's so that [experience] serves as the starting point for being able to write a short story or a novel later on…
  • On not wanting to be deemed a woman author (as quoted in “ROSARIO FERRE: THE VANGUARD OF PUERTO RICAN FEMINIST LITERATURE”)

• The fundamental truth of my life, the principle that governs it, is that nobody has a monopoly over the truth. Every person is a lens that focuses reality in a different way and everybody has the right to do so. This, in fact, is an anarchist principle, for I am indeed, an anarchist. From the moment I position myself at a certain standpoint, I immediately see things from that perspective and from its opposing perspective…
  • On how her writing allows readers to imagine themselves in “Sin pelos en la lengua : Rosario Ferré’s Last Interview” in Centro Journal (2012)

• …I grew up in Ponce where all our domestic service was black. I always had a lot of contact with them, and to a degree they gave me the kind of love that my family denied me. And so I have that sympathy—or empathy—for la gente de color (people of color), and I cannot help it. However, I do not like to create archetypes. If it is possible to break down a novel into archetypes, it is not a good novel…
  • On featuring Black and mulatto characters in her works in “Sin pelos en la lengua : Rosario Ferré’s Last Interview” in Centro Journal (2012)

External links