I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.
I didn’t marry. I didn’t have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes.
The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn’t feel like anything is private anymore.
We can have our hearts broken over so much more. It is important to recognize the full spectrum of heartbreak. We can be heartbroken by lost and by disappointment. But heartbreak is not just this negative image we see, it’s not this terrible experience that brings no benefits.
Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.
I think I didn’t know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn’t want to do. And I didn’t want my mother’s life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers.
Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in.
I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw, and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer’s heart.
When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that’s when it’s powerful.
You can never have too much sky.
Generally if you’re a daughter in a Mexican family, no one wants to tell you anything; they tell you the healthy lies about your family.
I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.
The house was immaculate, as always, not a stray hair anywhere, not a flake of dandruff or a crumpled towel. Even the roses on the dining-room table held their breath. A kind of airless cleanliness that always made me want to sneeze.
Even if we don’t know if God exists, we can be certain love exists, because its power transcends death.
The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil.
I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death.
It’s difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story – a novel is a large story. I’m used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings.
I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.
The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it’s in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace.
I don’t see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. I don’t believe this is truly freedom.
When you have your heart broken wide, you are also open to things of beauty as well as things of sadness. Once people are not here physically, the spiritual remains, we still connect, we can communicate, we can give and receive love and forgiveness. There is love after someone dies.