Marisel Vera: One of the reasons that I wrote The Taste of Sugar, and it was so important to me as I was writing, I realized that it wasn't just a story about the history of Puerto Rico and these Puerto Ricans who went to Hawaii, but it was a discovery of my roots, my Puerto Rican roots. It was a chance for me to claim being Puerto Rican, and a gift that I thought would be not just to myself but to my peers, my sisters, Puerto Ricans like me who didn't know our history, because this is what happens when you grow up belonging to a colony, your own history of your own ancestors is not taught.