Interview with Anjanette Delgado
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Anjanette Delgado (Santurce, 1967) writes about sexile, uprootedness, and social justice. Winner of an Emmy Award for her human-interest journalism, she is the author of the novels The Heartbreak Pill (Atria, 2008) and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Penguin Random House, 2014). She has written poetry, fiction, and essays for The New York Times (Modern Love, Opinion), NPR, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Hostos Review (CUNY), Tupelo Quarterly, Women’s Review of Books, and Distrópika, among many other journals and anthologies. She edited the anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press, 2021), which won a gold medal in collective fiction at the Latino International Book Awards in 2022, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, and Arabic. Anjanette holds a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications (CoPu) from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Her most recent book, a hybrid of poetry and nonfiction titled El Sexilio, has just been published in Puerto Rico by Editorial LaCriba (November 2024).
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TERESA DOVALPAGE: The term sexile or “sexilio” is relatively new, as you point out, since it was coined by Puerto Rican sociologist Manolo Guzmán at the beginning of the 21st century to refer to queer people exiled for their sexual preferences. Later, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel broadened its meaning in an essay about the literature of female desire. Your book, El Sexilio, delves deeply into the concept from a variety of perspectives, from feminist to decolonial. It also goes beyond an academic essay or a sociological analysis. It is, among many other things (all essential), “an Anjanette Delgado’s tiraera.” What was the spark, the inspiration, that led Anjanette Delgado to write it?
ANJANETTE DELGADO: This book was born out of a poem commissioned from me by my editor at The New York Times, Isvett Verde. She had the excellent idea of publishing a poetic Op-Ed, that is, a lyrical opinion piece. At that moment, I thought I was going to write about the relationship between colonization and violence against the feminine, and leave at that. But as you know better than anyone, one knows where one starts, but not where one is going to end, and what began to emerge, supported by all the work I had already done on diasporic dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean, was my pain. The aftermath of my leaving. My attempts to return. The parts that hadn’t heal. You look in the mirror and see what’s behind you because there’s a gap you didn’t know you had, a tear, a desgarre the size of your humanity.
DOVALPAGE: That desgarre is faithfully captured in the poem. I think it combines the best of an Op-Ed with the beauty and power of lyrical synthesis in a woman’s voice. And speaking of voices, you say in El mapa del sexilio (The Map of Sexile): “Sexile is not a choice. It doesn’t imply true agency.” Here I hear the voice of the sexiliadas, a voice that needed to be heard loud and clear. Now, to those who stayed because they lacked the opportunity or the courage to flee, those who live in their own sexile, in Puerto Rico or anywhere else in the world, what message would you give with your work?
DELGADO: Just that you don’t always leave because you want to. In the same way, you don’t always “decide” to stay. You believe that you chose to leave or that you stopped doing this or that. But there are social and political processes with influence over your life, like that boyfriend who behaves badly before behaving worse to force you to leave him. He wants you to bear the guilt of being “just one more who leaves.” In English, they call this dynamic “gaslighting,” where your abuser convinces you that you’re the bad one who left him. Patriarchy is a bad guy. You can’t live with him, and you can’t kill him. So, you leave. You save yourself and suffer the consequences.
DOVALPAGE: “That boyfriend who behaves badly before behaving worse to force you to leave him” is the best description I’ve read about forced exile. In I Want to Write a Post-Colonial Poem…, the social intertwines with the domestic and the personal. Second-class citizenship, like the category of “neglected children of a lesser God,” applies equally to nationality and gender (female). To what extent was writing this poem cathartic for you, as a woman and as a Puerto Rican?
DELGADO: I think that someday I’ll feel that catharsis you envision. I don’t feel it yet. I’m still afraid to speak. Writing it was an act of love, not only toward Puerto Rican women like me but also toward men who don’t want to be like their fathers or grandfathers. But I’m terrified of hurting others any more than they’ve already been hurt. Of not being understood or not having expressed myself clearly. We’ll see.
DOVALPAGE: You don’t have to worry about hurting anyone. Just the opposite: your words heal. They may even help someone decide what to do in a dangerous situation, as it happens with your essay The Hacker, recently published in Literatur.Review. Now tell me, how do you hope (wish, imagine) that the poem will influence your readers, in Puerto Rico and anywhere else, who feel, for any reason, like second-class citizens and children of a lesser God?
DELGADO: Well, many things are happening in Puerto Rico. People have enough problems. Colonization is choking them. But they don’t see the conditions, the viability, for us to be independent. And our “owner” (because we are “their” territory, and any notion of agency is an illusion) continues to undermine our political dignity and energy with their “blessed board” (which I say sarcastically). My people who live on the archipelago are worn out from so much. They’ve been fighting for too many years, and nothing gets better. So, I don’t feel entitled to tell others what they should think or feel when reading. Rather, I hope they feel my love. That I care about them. And if anything in the book serves to generate constructive conversations, then I’ll be more than happy.
DOVALPAGE: I imagine a group of friends reading the book, commenting on it over coffee or a good rice and beans meal. It’s a book for discussion, with so much to dig into. A significant part of this fabric are the deities and the ancestors. Yukiyú, Yemayá, Changó, Ogún, and Obatalá are contrasted in the poem with “those no-help white gods.” Tell me about the Taíno and African influences in your work and how you reclaim them with your voice.
DELGADO: Those lines, those deities, those ancestors are beings I have known very well since I was a child, but I never felt entitled to claim them. Maybe because I’m of African descent but not evidently Black (though that’s how I’ve always felt and acted). But the point is that (living in the U.S.), I was aware of my privilege and placed myself (still do) at the end of the line. Also, I despise performative Blackness. I don’t have to prove to anyone how I feel. Everyone knows what they are and what they aren’t, which is very different from how you’re racialized or misgendered. It wasn’t until Mayra Santos Febres, the undisputed master of contemporary Afro literature in Puerto Rico, edited (cut to shreds) a piece I wrote, that I allowed this part of my identity to have space on the page. She had to give me permission. She had to encourage (scold) me until I forgave myself and began to confront my uprootedness. To write what came to me. That’s where all of this came from, things I had kept for decades in the same suitcase where I took my life with me in the early nineties.
DOVALPAGE: I’m glad you opened that suitcase because there was so much value stored there, including personal experiences that are hard to speak about… or write about. I think of what you mention in “Lo que las mujeres de la colonia más antigua del mundo saben sobre la violencia contra la femenino” (What Women from the World’s Oldest Colony Know About Violence Against the Feminine) about a time when you lived alone, as a single mother in Puerto Rico, and kept a broomstick by the door, which you would wield while checking all the rooms for fear someone might be hiding there. Here, the broom, a symbol of women’s domestic labor for centuries, becomes a tool and a weapon. In these times of AK-47 massacres and rampant shootings, can we still defend ourselves with a broomstick? Would it be better to wield a gun? What do you think?
DELGADO: Neither the broom nor the gun will change things. We have to change minds. We need to ally with the many, many men who understand and who also want to free themselves from the oppression of roles of “masculinity por mis cojones,” pardon my French. The clearest example is young people. I see so many good things in them. They give me hope, regardless of whether they identify with a gender or none.
DOVALPAGE: Yes, the attitude of the Millennial, Gen Z, and Alpha generations warms the heart. Such a difference (mostly for the better) from ours! Luckily, history won’t repeat itself. And speaking of history, “Contexto para las referencias históricas y políticas en el poema” (Context for the Historical and Political References in the Poem) is, as you rightly subtitled it, “a kind of Puerto Rico 101 for non-Puerto Ricans.” Why was this historical introduction necessary? I’m not asking if it was because I have no doubt it was.
DELGADO: Well, in 2017, after Hurricane María, my non-Puerto Rican neighbors and friends asked me a thousand questions. The usual. What are we, Americans or Puerto Ricans? What is this “commonwealth?” Why do we complain so much if they went to the “island” once (on vacation) and everything was happy-happy, and people were paying with dollars and they had a great time? How come we’re born citizens and they aren’t? Incredibly, after the protests against the... fffffformer governor Ricky Roselló, the same questions! I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m the one who’s wrong. They don’t understand us because this situation is a hot mess of rice with you-know-what. There is no way it can be easily understood. This little book is for my Boricuas, but the “Puerto Rican 101” parts are so we can give it to anyone who asks because they truly want to know and not just to make a fuss, por joder la pita. This way, at least, we can save our breath.
DOVALPAGE: It’s really tiring to keep answering the same questions… and giving the same answers. On the other hand, your “Puerto Rican 101” is extremely useful because there is so much we need to learn about the island. I learned a lot, for example, about the economic implications of the Jones Act. Thank you, Anja, for this book and everything you give us in it, a wonderful blend of personal history and the history of your country. I’m glad it’s coming out in November because it’s a perfect New Year’s gift!
DELGADO: Thank you so much, dear Te, for your support of me, and mine.
ANJANETTE DELGADO: This book was born out of a poem commissioned from me by my editor at The New York Times, Isvett Verde. She had the excellent idea of publishing a poetic Op-Ed, that is, a lyrical opinion piece. At that moment, I thought I was going to write about the relationship between colonization and violence against the feminine, and leave at that. But as you know better than anyone, one knows where one starts, but not where one is going to end, and what began to emerge, supported by all the work I had already done on diasporic dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean, was my pain. The aftermath of my leaving. My attempts to return. The parts that hadn’t heal. You look in the mirror and see what’s behind you because there’s a gap you didn’t know you had, a tear, a desgarre the size of your humanity.
DOVALPAGE: That desgarre is faithfully captured in the poem. I think it combines the best of an Op-Ed with the beauty and power of lyrical synthesis in a woman’s voice. And speaking of voices, you say in El mapa del sexilio (The Map of Sexile): “Sexile is not a choice. It doesn’t imply true agency.” Here I hear the voice of the sexiliadas, a voice that needed to be heard loud and clear. Now, to those who stayed because they lacked the opportunity or the courage to flee, those who live in their own sexile, in Puerto Rico or anywhere else in the world, what message would you give with your work?
DELGADO: Just that you don’t always leave because you want to. In the same way, you don’t always “decide” to stay. You believe that you chose to leave or that you stopped doing this or that. But there are social and political processes with influence over your life, like that boyfriend who behaves badly before behaving worse to force you to leave him. He wants you to bear the guilt of being “just one more who leaves.” In English, they call this dynamic “gaslighting,” where your abuser convinces you that you’re the bad one who left him. Patriarchy is a bad guy. You can’t live with him, and you can’t kill him. So, you leave. You save yourself and suffer the consequences.
DOVALPAGE: “That boyfriend who behaves badly before behaving worse to force you to leave him” is the best description I’ve read about forced exile. In I Want to Write a Post-Colonial Poem…, the social intertwines with the domestic and the personal. Second-class citizenship, like the category of “neglected children of a lesser God,” applies equally to nationality and gender (female). To what extent was writing this poem cathartic for you, as a woman and as a Puerto Rican?
DELGADO: I think that someday I’ll feel that catharsis you envision. I don’t feel it yet. I’m still afraid to speak. Writing it was an act of love, not only toward Puerto Rican women like me but also toward men who don’t want to be like their fathers or grandfathers. But I’m terrified of hurting others any more than they’ve already been hurt. Of not being understood or not having expressed myself clearly. We’ll see.
DOVALPAGE: You don’t have to worry about hurting anyone. Just the opposite: your words heal. They may even help someone decide what to do in a dangerous situation, as it happens with your essay The Hacker, recently published in Literatur.Review. Now tell me, how do you hope (wish, imagine) that the poem will influence your readers, in Puerto Rico and anywhere else, who feel, for any reason, like second-class citizens and children of a lesser God?
DELGADO: Well, many things are happening in Puerto Rico. People have enough problems. Colonization is choking them. But they don’t see the conditions, the viability, for us to be independent. And our “owner” (because we are “their” territory, and any notion of agency is an illusion) continues to undermine our political dignity and energy with their “blessed board” (which I say sarcastically). My people who live on the archipelago are worn out from so much. They’ve been fighting for too many years, and nothing gets better. So, I don’t feel entitled to tell others what they should think or feel when reading. Rather, I hope they feel my love. That I care about them. And if anything in the book serves to generate constructive conversations, then I’ll be more than happy.
DOVALPAGE: I imagine a group of friends reading the book, commenting on it over coffee or a good rice and beans meal. It’s a book for discussion, with so much to dig into. A significant part of this fabric are the deities and the ancestors. Yukiyú, Yemayá, Changó, Ogún, and Obatalá are contrasted in the poem with “those no-help white gods.” Tell me about the Taíno and African influences in your work and how you reclaim them with your voice.
DELGADO: Those lines, those deities, those ancestors are beings I have known very well since I was a child, but I never felt entitled to claim them. Maybe because I’m of African descent but not evidently Black (though that’s how I’ve always felt and acted). But the point is that (living in the U.S.), I was aware of my privilege and placed myself (still do) at the end of the line. Also, I despise performative Blackness. I don’t have to prove to anyone how I feel. Everyone knows what they are and what they aren’t, which is very different from how you’re racialized or misgendered. It wasn’t until Mayra Santos Febres, the undisputed master of contemporary Afro literature in Puerto Rico, edited (cut to shreds) a piece I wrote, that I allowed this part of my identity to have space on the page. She had to give me permission. She had to encourage (scold) me until I forgave myself and began to confront my uprootedness. To write what came to me. That’s where all of this came from, things I had kept for decades in the same suitcase where I took my life with me in the early nineties.
DOVALPAGE: I’m glad you opened that suitcase because there was so much value stored there, including personal experiences that are hard to speak about… or write about. I think of what you mention in “Lo que las mujeres de la colonia más antigua del mundo saben sobre la violencia contra la femenino” (What Women from the World’s Oldest Colony Know About Violence Against the Feminine) about a time when you lived alone, as a single mother in Puerto Rico, and kept a broomstick by the door, which you would wield while checking all the rooms for fear someone might be hiding there. Here, the broom, a symbol of women’s domestic labor for centuries, becomes a tool and a weapon. In these times of AK-47 massacres and rampant shootings, can we still defend ourselves with a broomstick? Would it be better to wield a gun? What do you think?
DELGADO: Neither the broom nor the gun will change things. We have to change minds. We need to ally with the many, many men who understand and who also want to free themselves from the oppression of roles of “masculinity por mis cojones,” pardon my French. The clearest example is young people. I see so many good things in them. They give me hope, regardless of whether they identify with a gender or none.
DOVALPAGE: Yes, the attitude of the Millennial, Gen Z, and Alpha generations warms the heart. Such a difference (mostly for the better) from ours! Luckily, history won’t repeat itself. And speaking of history, “Contexto para las referencias históricas y políticas en el poema” (Context for the Historical and Political References in the Poem) is, as you rightly subtitled it, “a kind of Puerto Rico 101 for non-Puerto Ricans.” Why was this historical introduction necessary? I’m not asking if it was because I have no doubt it was.
DELGADO: Well, in 2017, after Hurricane María, my non-Puerto Rican neighbors and friends asked me a thousand questions. The usual. What are we, Americans or Puerto Ricans? What is this “commonwealth?” Why do we complain so much if they went to the “island” once (on vacation) and everything was happy-happy, and people were paying with dollars and they had a great time? How come we’re born citizens and they aren’t? Incredibly, after the protests against the... fffffformer governor Ricky Roselló, the same questions! I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m the one who’s wrong. They don’t understand us because this situation is a hot mess of rice with you-know-what. There is no way it can be easily understood. This little book is for my Boricuas, but the “Puerto Rican 101” parts are so we can give it to anyone who asks because they truly want to know and not just to make a fuss, por joder la pita. This way, at least, we can save our breath.
DOVALPAGE: It’s really tiring to keep answering the same questions… and giving the same answers. On the other hand, your “Puerto Rican 101” is extremely useful because there is so much we need to learn about the island. I learned a lot, for example, about the economic implications of the Jones Act. Thank you, Anja, for this book and everything you give us in it, a wonderful blend of personal history and the history of your country. I’m glad it’s coming out in November because it’s a perfect New Year’s gift!
DELGADO: Thank you so much, dear Te, for your support of me, and mine.
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