SOURCE: "Rosario Ferré," in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out, Rutgers University Press, 1993, pp. 83-103.

In the following interview, which took place in 1991, Ferré discusses her background and fiction, particularly her stories.

In 1974, Puerto Rican artist Francisco Rodón displayed a portrait of writer Rosario Ferré, surrounded by flames and wearing newsprint. Entitled Andromeda, the painting invokes the mythological daughter sacrificed for her mother's follies and, with her father's complicity, put on a rocky ledge to be devoured by a serpent. Andromeda was rescued by Perseus, but no one rescued Ferré when the furor arose which led to the painting.

The daughter of a former governor of Puerto Rico and a graduate student in Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Puerto Rico, Ferré had broken a cultural taboo. In 1972, in the seventh issue of Zona de carga y descarga ("Loading and Unloading Zone"), a literary magazine...