“I was born [in Puerto Rico]. I was raised, until I was 13, in rural Puerto Rico. And so that’s the life that I knew and my expectations, as a child, were that that would be my life --- I would be like the women around me…. So, of course at 13 there is what I used to think as the most traumatic event in my life, which was when we leave the island of Puerto Rico…. I think a lot of my writing is to continue to process that experience for myself as an elder in our community. But also, very much aware that I was not alone in this experience and I am not alone in this experience now.”

In a recent interview, Esmeralda Santiago admitted these feelings to a Washington Post writer. In her latest book, she explores these ties through a story of deep commitment and the lasting veils of cultural identity.

"Her elegant prose notwithstanding, Santiago is a beacon of truth about the immigrant experience and what this nation needs to change in order to honor properly the diverse citizenship that came here to blend their own beautiful cultures together for a new start."

The mothers of LAS MADRES are a group of self-named women who have created a community with their daughters, las nenas, founded on both friendship and actual blood ties. Luz, once a promising dancer in Puerto Rico who grows up to be Marysol's mother, is an enigma to her daughter. Suffering brain injuries and an adolescence that becomes a mystery after a car accident in 1975, Luz has never been able to communicate to Marysol what her life was really like --- neither the pain nor the pleasure of being a young dancer, a friend, or a girl with hopes and dreams. She could only recount the strange places that her mind would take her, giving her spells that were mystical and frightening but not hers to control.

In 2017, Marysol and her friend, Graciela, suggest that the madres and nenas take a trip together to Puerto Rico to help Luz recover some of her long-repressed memories. However, the angry winds of climate change blow two hurricanes in their direction, uncovering a secret that threatens to destroy their ages-old confidences with something new and disturbing.

LAS MADRES is a novel that addresses many difficult issues: women’s sexuality at different times in their lives, the humor that keeps friendship and love alive, the hopes that shame and disability cannot keep at bay, and the greater joys of a life well lived. And, of course, the divine imperative of the family unit, whether blood or other, an aspect of their lives that proves far more tenuous than they had originally thought. In the wake of disaster, much is revealed.

Santiago creates a multivarious array of tomes to introduce and clothe her characters. Each woman is a distinctive individual, and the very different ways they work out problems with all of the above issues gives Santiago a very rich base in which to flesh out their discoveries against the ancient, giant discoveries that are made in cultural units. Time is key, and with the madres facing a shortage of it and the nenas facing the far-reaching wilderness of it in their own lives, the two factions are brought together in much deeper ways than anyone would have expected.

LAS MADRES is yet another novel that gives climate change a chance to blow open, as it were, the things that hold people together in cases of severe stress and trauma. As the women think about helping those around them rebuild from the damage, they take stock of how they can care for each other and forge even greater bonds in light of new life configurations.

Esmeralda Santiago is one of my favorite contemporary writers. As with her brilliant memoirs, WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN and ALMOST A WOMAN, she finds a quiet and melodic voice in which to state hard truths. Her elegant prose notwithstanding, Santiago is a beacon of truth about the immigrant experience and what this nation needs to change in order to honor properly the diverse citizenship that came here to blend their own beautiful cultures together for a new start.