In prose that draws from Puerto Rican folklore and mythology, a literary lineage of women writers of color, and narratives of identity, Jamie Figueroa presents a cultural coming-of-age story. Mother Island gets to the heart of the question: Who do we become when we are no longer trying to be someone else? In a journey that takes her to Puerto Rico and back, Figueroa looks to her ancestors to reimagine her relationship to the past and to her mother’s native island, reaching beyond her own mother into a greater experience of mothering and claiming herself.

In-Person Event: $10 for non-members, free for MTH&M and community members (Members please login to access your discount). REGISTER HERE.

Copies of Mother Island are available for purchase and will be signed by the author at the event.
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About the Author:

Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult 2021), which was short-listed for the Reading the West Book Award and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, was an Indie Next pick, a Good Morning America must-read book of the month, and was named a most anticipated debut of the year by Bustle, Electric Literature, The Millions, and Rumpus. A member of the faculty in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Figueroa has published writing in The New York Times, Boston Review, McSweeney’s, and other publications. A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alum, she received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar. Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio, Figueroa is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico.

About the Moderator:

Susanne Pari is a novelist, journalist, essayist, book reviewer, and author interviewer whose writing focuses on stories of displacement and belonging, of identity and assimilation, of trauma and resilience. Born in New Jersey to an Iranian father and an American mother, she grew up both in the United States and Iran until the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced her family into permanent exile. Her first novel, The Fortune Catcher, has been translated into six languages and her non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine,

The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. She divides her time between Northern California and New York. _____________________________________________________________

Author programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are sponsored by Connecticut Public Broadcasting and the Wish You Well Foundation.