S8 Ep. 6: Jennifer Maritza McCauley on Puerto Ricans, Trump, and the Election

fiction/non/fiction

Writer Jennifer Maritza McCauley joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to analyze the fallout from Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” comment at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. McCauley—whose mother is Puerto Rican—discusses the island’s history and her communities’ reactions. McCauley reads her mother’s self-assured response to Hinchcliffe’s racism and reflects on the country’s distinctive mix of African, Spanish, and Indigenous populations. She also discusses the rights Puerto Ricans have and are denied, given their unusual status as U.S. citizens of a territory rather than a state. She reads from the title story of her collection, When Trying to Return Home, which includes many depictions of Puerto Rican identity.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley

• Kinds of Grace
• When Trying to Return Home
• Scar On/Scar Off
• 
  

Others:

• "Pennsylvania: anger among Puerto Ricans in key swing state after racist remarks" by José Olivares | The Guardian
• Tony Hinchcliffe
• “Trump’s Derision of Haitians Goes Back Years” by Michael D. Shear | The New York Times
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 52: “Myriam J.A. Chancy on Haitian American Communities”
• “Donald Trump is the First White President” by Ta-Nehisi Coates | The Atlantic | October 2017
• Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
• The Jones Act
• “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny, and Racism” by Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman and Michael Gold | The New York Times
• X: “Bigot Coachella”

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