In her book, A Puerto Rican Decolonial Theology: Prophesy Freedom, Teresa Delgado places Puerto Rican history and stories (of those on the island and in the diaspora) into dialogue with the Christian doctrines of anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology. While upholding the contention that Puerto Rican stories ought to be in dialogue with the Christian story, Delgado grants an epistemological authority to the stories stemming from the works of Esmeralda Santiago, Pedro Juan Soto, and Rosario Ferré. For Delgado, Puerto Rican literature emerges from lo cotidiano, functions as “source and site of theological analysis,” and bears both descriptive and prescriptive potential in the cultivation of a Puerto Rican decolonial theology. Puerto Rican literature is descriptive insofar as it is an “ethnographic site that provides a lens through which we can examine culture from a variety of angles,” and prescriptive insofar as it communicates a “desire for freedom from the context of nonfreedom” (11–12). In her literary analysis, Delgado reveals the tensions of Puerto Rican identity forged in the colonial crucibles of, first, Spain, and now the United States; lays bare the sufferings sustained by Puerto Ricans; and expresses the burdened hope of decolonization and reconciliation. For Delgado, attention to Puerto Rican experience, as communicated through our stories,Footnote ¹³ requires us to listen and respond to the prophetic cries that originate in liminal spaces—spaces that bear the potential to propel us toward the enactment of decolonial freedom.

While Delgado is clear that the contours of a Puerto Rican decolonial theology certainly resonate with the themes and concerns of liberation theologies, she also challenges her readers to consider the distinctive experience of Puerto Ricans by introducing the framework of an emancipation theology. Such a reframing is necessary for a variety of reasons. First, Delgado declares that the shift from “liberation” to “emancipation” resists the “mainstream” usage of the term “liberation,” which has lost its “critical and revolutionary connotation” (12). Additionally, emancipation speaks more truly to the Puerto Rican experience of colonization, of which slavery was a central part, and to how the “ongoing legacy of slavery” supported the creation of a sustained “racialized hierarchy [which] was transported off of the island to the continental United States” (12). To this point, the framework of an emancipation theology provides additional context for the ways that Puerto Ricans, in spite of their citizenship, have not been and cannot be fully incorporated into the US American body politic. Finally, the framework of an emancipation theology situates Delgado as a dialogue partner with Caribbean theologians who describe their own “theological position via emancipation from the anti-colonial/anti-slavery history and legacy in the Caribbean” (13). Caribbean theologians, well aware of the continuing state of the colonization of bodies and lands, are intent upon resisting the logics of coloniality. With this emphasis, Delgado signals that “transcending captivity” becomes conceivable only when we read theology and history from the space of coloniality, and this framing proves crucial to understanding Delgado's analysis of Puerto Rican identity, the gritos of Puerto Ricans, and the hope born out of the material and ideological spaces of the Boricúa borderlands.

Through the writings of Esmeralda Santiago, Delgado explores the ambiguities and tensions inherent in Puerto Rican identity. The Puerto Rican search to answer the question of “who we are” has largely been characterized by a dialectic between our “continuous oppression and annihilation” and our “determination to survive,” between being advocates for our freedom and “accomplices in our own captivity” (76). The contradictions of this dialectic expose Puerto Rican identity as a liminal identity, one that is situated in an “in-between” space. Yet this space of liminality bears the creative potential to aid us in recognizing the ways that our own identities have been stifled or overdetermined by the conditions of coloniality. Accompanying this recognition is the unleashing and amplification of a prophetic voice willing to take on the task of changing the conditions that hold us captive and embolden us to become reconciled to aspects of ourselves we have been taught to neglect or despise (90).

After speaking of the struggles related to Puerto Rican identity, Delgado turns her attention to centering the stories of Puerto Rican suffering as represented in the literature of Pedro Juan Soto. Along the lines of liberation theologians, Delgado advances the argument that salvation is intimately intertwined with walking in solidarity with those who suffer in the here and now (137). While the suffering and salvation of the Puerto Rican people claims one full chapter in her book, the grief that stems from our existence as “colonial subjects” haunts the entire book. In this sense, Delgado is exercising what I have termed a hermeneutics of el grito.Footnote ¹⁴ Delgado rightly centers the gritos of Puerto Ricans because one cannot fully cultivate a Puerto Rican decolonial theology without attention to those whose cries stem from the “colonial difference.”Footnote ¹⁵ Though the gritos of Puerto Ricans are cries of anger and grief, they are simultaneously cries for freedom and love reimagined in a decolonial vein. If salvation for all peoples cannot be achieved outside of responding in solidarity, there exists an ethical imperative to respond to these cries of suffering.

After considering the sufferings of the Puerto Rican people, Delgado turns to the work of Rosario Ferré, which she claims reflects “prophetic hope.” With specific reference to the “razing” of the house on the lagoon, an event that occurs in Ferré’s novel of the same name, Delgado invites us to reflect upon the creative and destructive potential of water (157). She contends that while the ever-shifting medium upon which the house on the lagoon was built led to its demise, the loss and absence of the house ignite our imaginations to consider “a new future in hope” (157). She draws a comparison to the ways that water has, at times, worked to divide the house of the Puerto Rican people. It is here that I would suggest Delgado provides us with the seeds for a Boricúa borderlands theory as she references the ways that the Anzaldúa's concept of the “open wound created at the place of the boundary/la frontera” is applicable to the Puerto Rican experience (172). While Delgado does not explicitly name the maritime Boricúa borderlands, she provides fertile ground for its theoretical growth in her reflections that the waters between “JFK and San Juan” function as both “boundary and access.” What I might call the Puerto Rican maritime borderlands and the identity of the mulatizaje, an identity that “rejects all that denies the love and freedom of our collective body” borne therein, can serve as the conduit for envisioning a decolonized future for Puerto Rico and “for Puerto Ricans seeking reconciliation with themselves” (171–73).

As Delgado's text is rich and avant-garde it will certainly elicit questions from her readers. One question that may arise is related to her construction of a Puerto Rican decolonial theology within the framework of an emancipation theology. Though I am in agreement with this framing, I wonder whether and to what extent it is clear to readers that Delgado is not simply expressing a semantic preference in her choice of “emancipation” rather than “liberation.” By this I mean, for individuals who are not well versed in the literature of coloniality/decoloniality, or of Caribbean theologians, will it be apparent that Delgado is not simply using a preferred synonym for “freedom” in speaking of decoloniality and emancipation, and how might Delgado make this more apparent?

The second question is one that is unavoidable after the destruction that came to Puerto Rico through Hurricane María on September 20, 2017. On that day the destructive potential of water was truly made apparent. Our gritos were largely left unanswered. Thousands of our fellow Boricúas met their death. Thousands of others were subjected to forced migration. On that day, our house on the lagoon, Puerto Rico, was razed. If the absence of our house on the lagoon can still bear hope (can it?), I wonder what we collectively might be able to imagine for a new, decolonized future for Puerto Rico, ripe with freedom and love?

Even with these questions, Teresa Delgado's book is a unique and welcome contribution from the diasporic Puerto Rican community to the continuing development of US Latinx theologies, liberationist theologies, and decolonial theologies. Her ability to construct a decolonial anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology in the context of the Puerto Rican experience is unprecedented but will certainly function as solid ground upon which scholars can, and should, build.