My Struggles as a Puerto Rican Author
Am I proud to be Puerto Rican, hell yeah I am! If you look past our shortcomings, then we are one of the coolest races or razas (in Spanish) that you will ever meet. However, I find that my Puerto Rican upbringing does hurt me a bit in my writing career. I'll be the first to admit that my English isn't perfect, at least to people living in England or compared to people raised in higher incomes residences. Blame my upbringing, I had to learn Spanish as my first language because my mother only knows Spanish. Despite that, I've gotten rather good in reading and writing Spanish, an endeavor that even my father is proud of. The kicker is my father was born on the island and his parents knew no English at all. So you might be asking, why in the hell do you write in your weaker language?
Well to answer that question, it's because I'm inspired to do so and honestly English is a "universal" language that a whole heck of a lot of people speak. For me, the best way I can spread my mind and imagination is by writing in English. Let me give you a little history about myself, I was an A student back in school. There was always that one class I would struggle at, can you guess what it was? English class. Yeah, I struggled in English class but aced creative writing. With that being said you might ask, why don't write in Spanish or cater to the Spanish market? The reason is rather simple, nobody in Puerto Rico reads! There I said the bold truth, nobody on the island reads anymore and those who do are either elderly or in the states. The hard truth is that the proportion of Hispanic people that do read to those who don't read is ridiculously bad! I mean really bad, Puerto Rico is regarded as one of the most illiterate countries. For that, I fault the very people for not trying to learn to read and the parents who have become very apathetic to raising their kids.
I might get a few hate comments from my fellow Puerto Ricans, but understand this is the hard truth. The picture above is a perfect analogy of my beautiful country and unfortunately, Americans and other more developed countries see this. As a result, we are treated as people who aren't serious about life or doing anything constructive and that's just not true to those like me who do try to do something constructive. This might sound like a rant, but it really isn't. It's a call for people to stop treating Puerto Rican writers and people in general who try to make a difference like third world people. In otherwords stop treating Puerto Rico like a third world country that's full of delinquents. Not all Puerto Ricans act like third world citizens, some like me actually do have talent and they love to create worlds in their writing.
Just take a look at the picture above and you'll see a picture showing that there are Latino authors. While not many, they do exist! Overall, I just feel like I have to work double and have more to prove because I'm from an island that's earned a bad reputation. FYI, the reason why Puerto Rico has a bad reputation is not because of us, blame that on the corrupt government. I'm sure if you're Puerto Rican you'll have an idea what I'm talking about. I feel like a man who has a handicap put on him based on circumstance rather than actual talent. So if you love to read or you're an author, why not give a Latino author like me a chance and read our books. You might just be pleasantly surprised! I hope you enjoyed this article and found a new appreciation for Hispanic/Puerto Rican authors.