About
Ms. Llanos-Figueroa is an Afro Puerto Rican historical novelist writer whose work is grounded in the Puerto Rican communities on the island and in New York City. Her longer narratives, though universal in nature, are heavily influenced by West African mystical symbology and 20th Century Latin American magical realism, while her shorter pieces are grounded in urban realism.
Her novel, Daughters of the Stone, was shortlisted for the prestigious 2010 PEN America Bingham Award. She has been included in the following anthologies: Breaking Ground/Habriendo Caminos, an Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012; Latina Authors and Their Muses; Trauma, Tresses and Truth; Daughters of Latin America; and Indomitable/Indomable, among others. For a full list of publications please refer to her web site at www.dahlmallanosfigueroa.com.
Featured Work
Daughters of the Stone
Daughters of the Stone follows the lives of five generations of Afro-Puerto Rican women focusing on the legacy passed from one generation to the next. How does each generation deal with that legacy given changing environments and cultures? How does the environment change the legacy? What legacy does a woman who owns nothing, not even her own body, leave for her daughter? What happens to communication when language is truncated? What happens to a storyteller when she can no longer tell her stories? Can one build for the future without coming to terms with the past?
