Traducido por Roque Raquel Salas Rivera
animal fiero y tierno is an essential classical work of contemporary Puerto Rican literature. It is as essential as Pedro Pietri's Puerto Rican Obituary, as Tato Laviera's La Carrieta Made a U-Turn, as Juan Antonio Corretjer's Yerba bruja, as Luis Rafael Sánchez's Escribir en puertorriqueño. These books are the pillars of the Puerto Rican poetic tradition, adn they are also the tools for the literary exploration of intimacy, critical thought, and politics as a decolonial process that places one of the oldest remaining colonies of the world, Borikén, at its center.
Without animal fiero y tierno, one cannot understand the texture of Boricua affections, the nature of our intimacies, our relationship to beauty and hardship, to love and to la lucha, the recuperation of afro-indigenous proletarian voices and their/our intellectual cosmovisions and political theories. Ángelamaría Dávila magnified Julia de Burgos' poetry, critical thinking, and life, taking it to another level of metaphorical/feminist/nationalist/decolonial prowess. Only another poet of that calaña, another "fierce and tender animal" such as Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, could translate Ángelamaría in such a profound, faithful, and moving way.
I am so happy that this book is finally translated into English, bringing back my teacher's lessons to life in a language that needed her poetry.