“Remember that Puerto Rican literature always experienced a kind of shortcoming because there was a moral obligation to write realistically, to dramatize our struggle for independence—our colonial drama. If this was ignored, it became a faulty literature which should be punished with oblivion. Imaginative literature was practically disqualified…”

Source: A Last Vintage, p. 172

Conversations with History interview (1999)
Context: Literature must be written from the periphery toward the center, and we can criticize the center. Our credo, our theme, or our imagination is that of the peripheral human being. The man who is in the center does not have anything to write. From the periphery, we can write the story of the human being and this story can express the humanity of the center, so when I say the word periphery, this is a most important creed of mine.

Vol. II, p. 69
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

"Anthony Trollope," Century Magazine (July 1883); reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888).

Caxtoniana: Hints on Mental Culture (1862)

My Mark Twain http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3390/3390.txt (1910)

"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New (1926)

On her encouraging that Americans read literature beyond their country in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)