The Dichotomy of Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Rosario Ferré’s Maldito amor and Her Self-translation Sweet Diamond Dust

Abstract

In Rosario Ferré’s English self-translation of her novel Maldito amor, published as Sweet Diamond Dust, she significantly alters the content of the source text to fit an English-speaking readership. I describe and examine the dichotomous elements of Ferré’s Puerto Rican social identity—and, by extension, of the Puerto Rican collective identity—through an analysis of the disparities between the source text and her translation, against the context of the island’s cultural and political history as well as its colonial and neocolonial relationship with the United States.