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” is stylistically unique. She combines prose and creative nonfiction, myth and short stories to explore her memories. 

But the heart of the book — her push-pull relationship with her mother and her process of uncovering a true self — is as old as time. 

Figueroa’s mother was taken from Puerto Rico as a young child and raised in a New York City orphanage, separated from her native language, culture and ancestry. As many immigrants before her, she learned to keep her heritage distant, as a way to assimilate into a new country.

But Figueroa chafed at the disconnect — “my mother did not know how to define herself on her own terms” — and set out to remember. 

As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “[My mother] was concerned about how we were seen. She wanted to be included. Anything she could do to get closer to ‘white identity’ made it easier for her.”

“As a daughter, I respect those were the choices she was forced to make — and I feel like my life is lived in opposition to that.”

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Jamie Figueroa reclaims her identity as a Puerto Rican in her new memoir, “Mother Island.” 

Author Jamie Figueroa on reclaiming an identity her mother tried to shed

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