For many years, I’ve always wanted to write. I did a lot of it in high school. Back then, I practiced public speaking a lot and always participated in poetry recitation contests. I was the national champion in Puerto Rico many years ago. I’ve always loved speaking and writing, so I always thought about writing a book.

I finished my doctoral dissertation three years ago. Well, I had a draft [of the book], but writing and publishing costs money. I needed an editor — someone to help me manage the financial aspects and to proofread it to avoid damaging the work I had done on my dissertation.

I work with a publishing house called Publicaciones Puertorriqueñas Incorporada en el Caribe, and I had an editor named Don Andrés al Palomares. Andrés is a Spaniard who owns this publishing house, which helps independent writers like myself manage their affairs and their writing.

The book is related to my dissertation and my doctoral thesis. I conducted a research project to determine the correlation between certain variables — job satisfaction and job commitment — among public employees in Puerto Rico. Reading a thesis is not easy. Many people find it boring, and there’s no room for your personal opinion because it has to be based on the data and the findings. After completing the thesis, nothing was stopping me, and I wanted to have a presence in the literary world. So, I combined a topic that many people don’t like to read about with something they do enjoy reading.

I tried to combine the theme of job satisfaction, which was the central point of my thesis, with the indecision that Puerto Ricans experience due to our colonial status with the United States.

It’s a political and economic status, but it also translates into a mental and emotional state. When people feel like they belong neither here nor there, they enter a kind of mental paralysis that often prevents them from moving forward in life because they don’t know where they’re going. They speak English or Spanish, they think they’re American, but they feel like Puerto Ricans. They’re part of a large nation that on the one hand recognizes them, but on the other doesn’t and rejects them.

So it’s about living in between. We always live between something — between prejudice, between reality, between a good job. Puerto Ricans live in between, and that’s what my book is about.

There’s no reason to fight, no reason to dwell on separatist ideas, because these days, nationality is in the soul. Economically and socially, there’s no reason to separate; we can coexist with Americans, we can learn from them. And we can also teach them many things, because the Hispanic world is diverse, immense, and rich in culture. I want to write more about this union, this American-Hispanic bond.

I also want to eventually return to the university full-time, because right now I have a part-time position at Austin Community College. I eventually want to return to the University of Puerto Rico to give Puerto Rican students the perspective of life here on the mainland and in the territory of the nation that adopted us. There’s another life they can lead, and it’s important that we see it as an extension of the life we ​​have on the island

I’ve had more academic and professional experiences than the average person. I see myself as a spokesperson. I’m the one who carries the voice to say, “Here’s a group of people who are from here and there, and we can perfectly fit into this country because, due to historical circumstances, we’ve ended up in this great nation.” So, I like to talk and connect with people about topics that aren’t often discussed in schools or at home. I like to go a little beyond what we see.