"¿Y tu abuela dónde está?" | Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro | TEDxUPR

The topic of this talk is based on the personal and collective gratification we obtain from writing, narrating, and creating fiction about our genealogy. Yolanda encourages the audience to actively participate in discovering our history as a community and as an intrafamilial history. The topic of this talk is based on the personal and collective gratification we obtain through writing, narrating, and creating a fictional history of our genealogy. Yolanda urges the audience to actively participate in discovering our community and intrafamilial history. Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is a Puerto Rican writer. She has published several books that denounce and ignite a passionate approach that promotes discussion on Afro-identity and sexual diversity. She is the Director of the Department of Afro-Puerto Rican Studies, a Creative Writing performance project that responds to the announcement issued by UNESCO to celebrate the International Decade of African Descent. She has been invited by the United Nations to the "Remembering Slavery" program to talk about women, slavery and creativity in 2015. Her storybook “Las Negras”, winner of PEN Club Story National Prize of Puerto Rico in 2013, explores the limits of female character evolution challenging powerful hierarchies. She has also won the Award of the Puerto Rican Culture Institute in 2015, 2012 and the National Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature in 2008. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx