Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres is an author of Afro-Puerto Rican descent who teaches at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. She is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, and writer of children’s books. Santos- Febres started writing at the age of 5. Her work focuses on the African diaspora, Puerto Rico’s socially marginalized peoples, sexuality, gender, and other themes. Santos-Febres novel Nuestra Señora de las noche won Puerto Rico’s 2007 Premio Nacional de Literatura.
Translated Titles by Mayra Santos-Febres
Discovered by Martha Divine in the backstreets of San Juan, picking over garbage, drugged out of his mind and singing boleros that transfix the listener, a fifteen year old hustler is transformed into Sirena Selena, a diva whose uncanny beauty and irresistible voice will be their ticket to fame and fortune. Silena, determined to escape the poverty and abuse s/he suffered as a child, engages a wealthy married hotelier in a long seduction in this mordant, intensely lyrical tragi-comedy - part masque, part cabaret - about identity (class, race, gender) and "the hunger and desire to be other things."
Born into poverty and then abandoned by her mother, Isabel "La Negra" Luberza blossoms into a supremely sensual young woman. Obsessed with attaining aristocratic status—armed with incredible physical presence, indomitable ambition, and keen intelligence—she meets Fernando Fornarís, the man who will forever change her life. With a parcel of land given to her by her rich, white married lover, Isabel transforms herself into a hard-edged and merciless businesswoman—abandoning her own newborn son to become Puerto Rico's most feared and respected madam, a collector of society's secrets, a queen of the notorious brothel that emerges as the island's true political and economic heart.