¿Why a Book?

Eight Hurricane Maria Stories from Puerto Rico began as a makeshift story during one of Puerto Rico's many blackouts. Hurricane Maria hadn't happened yet. The first tale spread its wings on the night of Hurricane Irma, which brazed Puerto Rico's shores a couple weeks before Maria took more accurate aim.

On the night of Irma, I was in Guaynabo in the kitchen of my girlfriend's childhood home. I was asked for a story after the lights left us. I told my girlfriend, her mom, her uncle, and my dog (if he's capable of listening) a story about the truer than true origin of hurricanes. I made it up as I went along, so it involved the Lost City of Atlantis, demigods on vacation, and embezzled dimensions. I whistled for my dog to signal the story's end, and the storm spared our island.

Irma was a dud. She didn't deliver the same destruction to Puerto Rico as she had to the rest of the Caribbean. She was a passing footnote, and my story would've shared that same fate if it hadn't been for Irma's successor.

Maria was the real deal. She met Puerto Rico head on, and was the most powerful hurricane to make landfall on the island in over 80 years. She began with the promise of adventure, but left us lingering in her aftermath. She blasted Puerto Rico back to the past, to a time before smartphones, Wi-Fi, and Amazon doorstep deliveries. She also unearthed deeper problems that weren't caused by a passing storm.

The island-wide blackout showed no signs of abating, not even a momentary flash of light. Like many, I waited in line after line to buy basic necessities. I found creative ways to cook food and wash clothes. I scoured the land for places with a free power source. Still, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I revisited that improvised story from the night of Irma. At my girlfriend's suggestion, I replaced my dog in the story with Puerto Rico's very own coqui frog. Neat, but I would've stopped there if it hadn't been for a family who turned into unwelcome neighbors.

With no stable source of electricity, Puerto Rico had become generator island. One family brought forth the Generator from Hell, forging a bridge to the dark dimension right next to my apartment. As the weeks went on, I began to hate this family. I wanted to forget about them, but the Generator from Hell was always there, roaring demonic incantations in my ear. I had to write about it for the sake of sanity.

From there, I decided to write and illustrate a story for each week of the blackout. Eight stories took shape during the roughly eight weeks that our neighborhood went without power (66 days to be exact, but we were lucky compared to many parts of the island). I had a short book, but what would connect its eight stories? Sure, the stories all had something to do with Hurricane Maria, but I wanted those stories to build on more than a force of nature.

I didn't want my stories to revolve around a statement like “I survived Hurricane Maria.” Claiming to be a survivor would provide a false sense of drama and self-importance: this huge force of nature was somehow out to get me, but I vanquished it in the end by... simply not dying? Great, but what else did I do with all that living? Plus, championing a survival that didn't require a special skill or an unbeatable will seemed disrespectful to the unfortunate few who did die during the storm (most of those who are no longer with us found their end in Maria's slow aftermath). After the storm broke, most of us remained. So what else was there left to say?

This line of reasoning helped me decide on what I didn't want the stories to be about, and on a title for my book – just call it what it is: Eight Hurricane Maria Stories from Puerto Rico. Still, I needed to find a unifying idea for my stories. While some of the stories were in memoir form, others leaned more toward satire and sci-fi. I even had one about a homeless man's battle to keep his pants.

I realized the book was born in a storm but grew up in the uncertainty of the aftermath. This wasn't my uncertainty alone. No one could say for sure what Puerto Rico's future would be or how trouble in paradise would affect millions.

That was it. My book boiled down to one question:

What's happening to Puerto Rico!?

It was a simple question with complicated answers. It was something that I had to look at in eight different ways. Beyond a big bad storm, there was the shaky relationship with the United States, the insurmountable debt, the careless words of a president, and good people torn between love of home and the promise of a better life. To truly embrace the unknown, I needed memoir and magical realism, time and trouble, the call of the coqui and the hum of the generator. I needed the book to be about more than the adventure of a passing storm.

From telling a quick tale one stormy night to publishing a complete collection of stories, I've found joy in not knowing what will happen next. I hope you'll relive this feeling, and that my book contributes in some small way toward building a brighter future for Puerto Rico. Thanks for reading!