WHEN SHE WAS 23, Julia de Burgos renamed herself. It was 1937, and the Puerto Rican poet had just divorced her first husband, scandalizing her conservative compatriots. She didn’t stop there. Newly single, she opted not only to revert to her maiden name, Burgos, but also to alter it slightly, inserting “de” in front—which, in Spanish, denotes marital status or possession. With this, she declared that she was and forever would be under new ownership: her own.
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