Nancy Rosado

Nancy Rosado is a retired NYPD sergeant, whose disaster response experience includes 9/11, the Pulse Night Club and Parkland shootings, as well as hurricanes Katrina and Maria. María T. Padilla is the former editor of La Prensa in Orlando and founding editor of El Sentinel, the Spanish-language sister newspaper of the Orlando Sentinel. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4, and the storm surge, flash flooding, and countless landslides created widespread devastation. Thousands gathered what they had left and traveled to central Florida–already home to 1 million Puerto Ricans. In Padilla and Rosado´s Tossed to the Wind (University of Florida Press) Puerto Ricans from all walks of life, now living in Orlando and Kissimmee, describe in their own words the chaos and incomprehensible losses, living in uncertainty, and the anxiety of parents about providing for their children. But theirs is also a story of hope and endurance, as Puerto Ricans on the island shared what little they had and the diaspora in Florida offered refuge. Charles Venator-Santiago, author of Hostages of Empire called it “A clear, accessible, insightful, and at times profound description of the experiences of Puerto Ricans displaced to Florida in the aftermath of the devastation created by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.”