Interview: New Books Network
My interview with Minni Sawhney for the New Books Network covered many aspects of Migrations, my short story collection. Dr. Sawhney posed excellent questions that allowed me to discuss this collection at a deeper intellectual and critical level than other interviews. This interview also gave the book more critical context. Please take a listen and let me know your thoughts.
From the New Book Network website: Migrations (LA Review of Books, 2021) is a collection of short stories by the Puerto Rican born writer and now retired university professor J. L. Torres. Each story condenses a bit of the experience of a cross section of Puerto Rico: the rich who treat it like a playground, the stereotypical macho men, the shanty town dwellers. The ramifications of the stories are deep and the varied tales range from climate change and the destruction of natural ecosystems by tourism, to the Puerto Ricans of the diaspora who struggle in dysfunctional families and who long to be part of the mainstream but have weathered the subtle racism of American society that has taken a toll on their inner lives. Torres’s stories bring alive Puerto Rico to us, its natural beauty but also try to show the colonial economy that the country is.
Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi.
