Sep 19, 2018
Isla del Encanto
Fiction Inspired by Puerto Rico
I have been trying to put some order to my Medium library, mostly to make it easier for potential readers to find stories they might like. Those below were published in various Medium publications and some of them made their way into my self-published anthologies on Amazon.
All of them are about or take place in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island I call home. Puerto Rico was in the news lately as a result of its civil unrest, earthquakes and Hurricane Maria, the most intense tropical cyclone i.n the world (Wiki), one that devastated the island on September 20, 2017. We endured the longest power outage in the history of the US — in my area, seven months. My non-fiction description of the storm is A Tragedy Named Maria. I have also written a poem 190 Days in the Dark about that, a Diary in the Dark, and a poem The Catastrophe about Trumps’ four-hour visit to the island. I also published the self-explanatory essay, Why I Live Where I Live, about all these events.
But this collection is all fiction. These stories draw on my more than half a century living on a mountain in eastern Puerto Rico. It is not far from San Juan, along steep, narrow, winding roads. It is the area where my wife was born and I draw upon her stories, her family and our neighbors, local legends, the landscape, my love of the place and its people, and ultimately, of course, my imagination.
If you enjoy any of them, please comment — that is the greatest reward for a Medium writer, and check back for additions from time to time. I still have a lot of tales to tell. Except for “Belonging,” which is a contemporary story, I have not included my Taíno Tales here, stories about the encounter between the native inhabitants and the Spanish colonizers.They are in a separate collection.
