Translating Julia de Burgos from Oblivion

Julia de Burgos (1914–1953) was a Puerto Rican–born educator, poet, essayist, and journalist who wrote mostly in Spanish but also in English toward the end of her life. The recovery of Burgos’s writing is the subject of Vanessa Pérez-Rosario’s scholarly work. By gathering a team of translators and doing archival research, Pérez-Rosario has rescued the oeuvre of Burgos from oblivion. I Am My Own Path: Selected Writings of Julia de Burgos (University of Texas Press, 2025) includes poetry, essays, and personal correspondence by Burgos in the original Spanish with English translations by Jack Agüeros, Josefina Báez, Cyrus Cassells, Aurora Levins Morales, Roberto Márquez, Robin Myers, Urayoán Noel, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Mayra Santos-Febres, Carina del Valle Schorske, and Grace Shulman.

The introductory essay by Pérez-Rosario in this collection, titled “Translating Julia de Burgos,” gives an overview of Burgos’s life and her work. Pérez-Rosario asks, “What are the politics at stake when translating Burgos’s work into English? What are the scenes of translation in her work?” Whether “translation” means Burgos herself living a translated life in New York City and Washington, DC, or the work of the twelve translators included in this volume, is central, and Pérez-Rosario is careful not to render invisible the work of the translators.

The volume is divided into three parts: Selected Poems; Essays, Interview Essays, Vignettes and Sketches; and Letters. Some of the poems in part 1 include English versions by more than one translator. Parts 2 and 3 were translated by Robin Myers. By including the Spanish essays with English translations by Robin Myers, Pérez-Rosario rescues them from being erased from the cultural history of Hispanics in New York in the mid-twentieth century. 

Pérez-Rosario has carried out a systematic endeavor dedicated to compiling Julia de Burgos’s poetry, essays, and letters. A thoughtful note on acknowledgments, notes on the contributors, a note on translations and editions, and extensive endnotes make this volume complete. I Am My Own Path is a portable archive accessible in English and Spanish to readers, scholars, and admirers of the oeuvre of Julia de Burgos.

LaGuardia Community College