Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, anti-racist and Afrofuturist writer: “Remembering is a rebellion.”

When Grandma Petronila died in 2003, Puerto Rican writer Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (Guaynabo, 54) entered a deep period of mourning that could only be healed with stories. In a ritual act to resurrect Mami's memory, she began writing down everything she told about the women in the family. From 2004, Arroyo wrote from three to six in the morning the stories of the midwife Ndizi, who let the children of enslaved women die in Puerto Rico to spare them that difficult life, or of Petra, who went from being the caretaker of the son of a powerful landowner to becoming his sexual victim. From those memories, and from repeated visits to Puerto Rico's historical archives, the book Las Negras was born. in 2012.

The work has been reissued several times and translated into English and is one of the leading contemporary titles in Latin America and the Caribbean on Black feminism and anti-racism. Now, in 2025, the publishing house Yegua de Troya , part of the Penguin Random House group, launched an expanded edition with three Afrofuturist stories at the Madrid Book Fair . The old stories from the first edition of Las Negras continue in 2229, in a trial at the Tribunal of Investigations on Genocides and Related Documents. It's science fiction, but Arroyo, in an interview with EL PAÍS in Madrid, confesses that she longs to reach that year to experience the trial she imagined. "What happened in Africa and other past and present genocides will be a sore of shame for those who are looking at world history at that time," she says.

Question: Why did your grandmother inspire you to write these stories?

Answer: She passed away in 2003, and because I missed her so much, I started writing down everything she told me when I was a child. Writing was a way to heal my grief. I remember her telling me stories about the women in the family and saying, “Your grandmother was a midwife and did such and such a thing... But don't tell anyone.” Although years later she told me, “Well, when you tell someone this, someone will remember that we have to win.” To tell you the truth, I didn't really believe her at first. I lived in a time when I was very excited about my teachers; I was best friends with them. And I couldn't believe that the history teacher was lying to me [about slavery and colonization in Puerto Rico].

Q. How far back have you come in your family tree?

A. I'm going to read something I wrote about that , so I don't get the dates wrong. “Today I also discovered the names of my great-great-grandmother, Josefa (1849). My great-great-great-grandmother, Rosario (1811). And my great-great-great-great-grandmother Rita. There's no date of birth for Rita, but she appears in a census and civil registry from 1805. The registry indicates that Rita arrived by boat [from Africa].” I discovered this because in Puerto Rico there's a site called FamilySearch.com , which compiles all the baptismal records and digitizes them. When I enter my name, the [genealogical] tree opens up to the oldest, Rita.

Q. And have you written anything about Rita?

A. I started a novel called 1805. It's going very slowly, because with stories as painful as these, I have to do some healing work to keep writing.

Q. What did you feel when you heard that such painful situations had happened to women in your family?

A. My grandmother adjusted the story depending on my age. When I was 10, for example, she didn't tell me that the midwife "put babies to sleep" rather than allow them to be enslaved. At the time, she told me that my great-grandmother, the midwife, was a very strong and brave woman. Years later, she dropped the bombshell [that the midwife actually killed them with potions and spells].

Q. At what point did historical archives of slavery in Puerto Rico become part of the creative process?

A. When I started writing the stories my grandmother told me, I thought, "This sounds like a reading," or I wondered if it had really happened, and I went looking for information [in the Puerto Rican archives]. There I reconciled my grandmother's text with the text from the archives. My first contact with the archives was through the book Rebel Slaves. By Guillermo Baralt, a history text that mentioned the enslaved men, the hacienda they came from, their rebellion, and whether they had been imprisoned or punished. And at the bottom of the page it said, "And in these uprisings there were 11 enslaved women." Just a number, but it didn't say anything about them. Next to that were the acronyms of the archives he had consulted. The General Archive of Puerto Rico had almost all of the documents he was talking about. I went to look for them.

My grandmother used to tell me: "You have to get an education, because that's going to make a difference. The day you go to college, the women in my family will have won because we were going to be illiterate."

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, writer

Q. At a presentation of your book at Espacio Afro in Madrid, you stated that women had won in the stories. How is that possible if the endings in the stories are tragic?

A. My grandmother always told me I would go to the University of Puerto Rico, the most prestigious university in the country. She told me: “You have to get an education, because that will make a difference. The day you go to university, the women in my family will have won because we were going to be illiterate.” I didn't just learn to read and write; I learned to be a writer.

Q. Why the interest in Afrofuturism?

A. It's the same thing that happened when the movie Wakanda [ Black Panther , 2018] came out. Up until that point, there was very little to no representation of African Americans in futurism, in thinking about a future of dignity and progress. When I was growing up, I read a lot of science fiction: Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick... And I was writing science fiction too when I was 15. But my teachers would tell me, “It's fine for you to write about the flying saucer, but remember, what you have to do is read. What Black author do you know who writes science fiction?” I still wrote, and some of those stories ended up in books. Then I realized that there was an Octavia Butler writing science fiction, and that it was called Afrofuturism .

P. It is striking to imagine a trial in a Genocide Investigation Tribunal and to restore dignity to Afro-descendant peoples during colonization.

A. I wrote it knowing that. But at the same time, I'll tell you that in my creative writing workshops with children, I do a practice: we dress up as futuristic characters, with astronaut suits, sunglasses, and crowns. We imagine a future of kings and queens. Then, I tell them that in the past, we've been those people too, because in Africa, before slavery, there were empires. We do this to explain that, in the past, we were that future.

Q. How would we be judged in 2229?

A. I'll be there [laughs]. The African and other past and present genocides will be a source of shame for those who are looking at world history at that time.

I tell you that in the past we were also those people, because in Africa, before slavery, there were empires. We do this to explain that in the past, we were that future.

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, writer

Q. You direct the Chair of Ancestral Women in Puerto Rico. What does it consist of?

A. We want anyone to be able to replicate the process I had with Las Negras . We started with a simple writing exercise about the food the grandmothers prepared, to open up a sea of ​​memories. We also used a registry from the Puerto Rican Genealogical Society, which includes data on people who arrived as slaves, and we used La Gaceta de Puerto Rico , which recorded when enslaved people escaped. Since they didn't have documents, they described them, and that provided input to begin writing.

Q. The Chair is part of the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) proclaimed by the UN. What has the project achieved?

A. The UN extended the decade until 2034. So we're still writing, but this time we're reaching out to more people and other places: this year, for example, I'm giving a workshop in New York and others in Colombia.

Q. Why do you say that remembering is an act of rebellion?

A. The system is designed so that we don't remember. Although slavery like the one we knew in 1500 no longer exists, we are still not masters [of our time]. The masters, the owners of wealth, are the only ones who can break out of that cycle. In Africa, they talk about the Sankofa bird, a spirituality that carries a precious stone in its beak, which signifies remembering. The bird walks forward and every so often stops, looks back, and shows the jewel to the past. We have been led to believe that we shouldn't stop. That's why I believe remembering is a rebellion. I write to talk about Grandmother Petronila, Great-Grandmother Georgina, and Rita, and to leave a better world for the grandmother of the future, my daughter Aurora.