SOURCE: “Pandora's Log: Charting the Evolving Literary Project of Rosario Ferré,” in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, Vol. 29, No. 3, October, 1995, pp. 461–76.

In the essay below, Skinner traces Ferré's literary development in her narrative works, focusing on her essay “La cocina de la escrita,” her short story “La muneca menor,” her novel Maldito amor, and her short story collection Las dos Venecias.

In her essay “La cocina de la escritura,” published in 1982, Rosario Ferré describes her authorial project, her literary influences and her motivations for writing fiction. As part of this short autobiographical essay, she discusses the moment she embarked upon her career as a writer and the way she selected her initial literary theme. In choosing the subject of her first story, Ferré decided that she would focus upon an episode from the Puerto Rican past:

Pensé que lo mejor sería escoger una anécdota histórica...