Dear María,

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Winter has set early in Amsterdam. The water in the canal in front of my house flows darkly, just looking at it gives me the shivers. Still there's a brave swimmer who defies the dark water every morning. She reminds me of you, not as in a memory since we haven't met yet, but more like a distant dream, a lingering smell, a faint picture.

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My name is Milouska. I am a writer, a mother, and a woman who learned early that stories can both wound and heal — sometimes in the same breath. PEN Netherlands has asked me to serve as an ambassador for a threatened writer this coming year, and that is how your name arrived in my inbox, like a small flame in the dark. Warming my heart with the hope to someday meet you in person. Who knows where or what our words will bring us? 

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I read about you — about your brave book Si no fueras tan niña, about the memories you refused to bury, about the voices that rose against you when you told the truth. And although we have never met, something in your story reached for something in mine. I recognised the tremor of a woman deciding that silence is no longer an option. I recognised the loneliness of telling a story many would prefer remains untold. I recognised, too, the fierce clarity that follows when you understand that to speak is an act of protection, not only for yourself, but for every child who might one day need your courage. 

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That's why I clenched my fist in a feeling of victory, little as it may seem to some, when I read what you emailed:

"Public statements by certain sectors of those in power against the circulation of my book Si no fueras tan niña led to invitations to give lectures and to discuss the book in educational settings, where students were deeply moved and expressed their gratitude for my writing."

 

You are breaking down walls. At great costs, I can imagine. But you do it. Thank you, for your work benefits all of us women who have memories carved in our bodies. Women like my mother, who have experienced violence.

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I write mostly children's books, and I teach through stories. In a privileged safety, but I do realise how fragile those spaces can be — how easily literature in classrooms is reshaped, softened, censored, banned even, or stripped of the very truth that gives it meaning. When I read that your book was accused of 'glorifying' what it in fact exposes, I felt a familiar sting: anger about the ways power attempts to push voices back into silence. And I admired the way you handle yourself.

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This told me everything I needed to know about the kind of writer you are.

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I was born on dry but green Curaçao, but I live here in wet and grey Amsterdam where one is always near water that's not drinkable anymore and where I'm always thinking about the scarcity of drinkwater in my own country. My life is divided between the Caribbean and the Netherlands; I write across cultures, across histories, across the aftershocks of colonialism. I have learned that literature is often the only place where the full truth can breathe. And so the invitation to support you — to hold up your name, your work, your voice — felt less like a task and more like a calling I recognised.

In the coming year, I would like to write to you not only as part of this project, but as a fellow writer, as a woman who believes in the necessity of difficult stories, and as someone who knows that the act of remembering is itself a form of resistance. That safety is always shifting for women, like the sand under the tide. I would like to lend my voice wherever it can help, whether from a stage, a page, or the quietness of a letter.

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I hope this message found you in strong health. Physically, mentally. Your story matters, not despite its pain, but because of it.

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With solidarity, warmth and admiration,

Milouska