Listening to Puerto Rico Teach-Out

Magali García Ramis is an internationally renowned and award-winning Puerto Rican author, journalist, and former professor of journalism at the School of Communications at the University of Puerto Rico. García Ramis published her first story collection in 1976, La familia de todos nosotros, the same year that Rosario Ferré published Papeles de Pandora. Both books marked a rupture with the patriarchal establishment and signaled the entrance of female prose writers in Puerto Rican literary world. She is considered a canonical Puerto Rican author.

In this interview Magali García Ramis begins by discussing how Hurricane María came at a time when Puerto Rico “was already in shambles.” After outlining some of the major negative consequences of the storm: the lack of basic necessities, the ineffective responses by the US and Puerto Rican governments, the collapse of the power grid and communications networks around the island, etc. But she stresses that tragedy in Puerto Rico has always brought out the many positive aspects of the island and its people. She gives a vivid description of her experiences during the storm, which she weathered alone in her apartment. She also speaks at length about the many injustices and inequalities that Hurricane María revealed. Hurricane María, she insists “underscores with a giant red line, the colonial condition of Puerto Rico.”