In this essay, Boricua author Jamie Figueroa brings her pen to the blank pages of her family’s history, exploring writing as a tool of revelation and healing in confronting a legacy of generational trauma and assimilation into a white colonialist culture. “You’re left with an accumulation of blanks, superficial displays you know better than to trust. I am magnetized to what is behind and beneath. I excavate with my pen.”

As she works to uncover the inherited wounds of her ancestors housed in her own bodily cells, she also reaches for a deeper remembering—writing her way into the landscapes and the cultural memories that bring together the pieces of her identity.   

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices