Quote by Julia de Burgos: “I am the river, and you are its shores.”

A river cannot exist without its banks — they give it direction, shape, and identity. But the river is also what gives life to the shores. This is a metaphor for an intimate relationship of mutual definition: each person shapes and is shaped by the other.

De Burgos wrote this during her most productive period in Puerto Rico in the late 1930s, before her eventual exile to New York and Cuba. Her love poetry was inseparable from her political poetry — both expressed a longing for freedom, whether from colonial rule or from the roles imposed on women.

Puerto Rican poet and political activist whose passionate verse addressed female independence, Puerto Rican nationalism, and social justice. Her poem 'To Julia de Burgos' is one of the most celebrated poems in the Spanish-speaking world and explored the split between a woman's public and private selves.