Feminisms in the Caribbean: Writing in Hiatuses

<p>The second episode of the <em>Feminisms in the Caribbean </em>series, <em>Writing in Hiatuses</em>, is the result of an epistolary conversation through audio notes and emails with writer Marta Aponte Alsina. A storyteller, novelist and literary critic, Marta Aponte wrote her novel <em>La muerte feliz de William Carlos Williams </em>(The Happy Death of William Carlos Williams) out of a desire to write a book that she herself wanted to read. This novel, published in 2015, brings up fundamental issues in her writing, such as the gaze of the foreigner, the extended ties of Puerto Rican culture, the rewriting of canonical texts, and womxn’s voices. Her first novel <em>Angélica Furiosa</em>, published in 1994, revives the figure of the witch and spiritism to explore Puerto Rican history from the margins and anti-colonial narratives. As an author of novels and short stories, Marta Aponte is also prolific in essay writing, with titles such as <em>Somos Somos islas: ensayos de camino</em> (We Are Islands: Essays on the Road), published in 2015. As she herself wonders with her latest novel <em>PR3 Aguirre</em> (2018) in relation to the gaze of the one who writes: “Or do we write to map, to explore tributaries, to invade archives, to steal knowledge, to cannibalize the literature of the lords, to snatch the privilege of authorship from the one who wrote us in his own way, the better to cross us out?”</p>