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My Readers Are As Diverse As Any Group You Will Ever See. Something That Booksellers Always Tell Me. That They Are Always Surprised At The Kind Of People That Come To My Readings. That They Are Such A Mix Of Ages And Colors. It Looks Like People Spilling Out Of An Elevator.

-Sandra Cisneros

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My Readers Are As

Sandra Cisneros

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My Readers Are As Diverse As Any Group You Will Ever See. Something That Booksellers Always Tell Me. That They Are Always Surprised At The Kind Of People That Come To My Readings. That They Are Such A Mix Of Ages And Colors. It Looks Like People Spilling Out Of An Elevator.

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More From Sandra Cisneros

Well, When You're An Immigrant Writer, Or An Immigrant, You're Not Always Welcome To This Country Unless You're The Right Immigrant. If You Have A Mexican Accent, People Look At You Like, You Know, Where Do You Come From And Why Don't You Go Back To Where You Came From? So, Even Though I Was Born In The United States, I Never Felt At Home In The United States. I Never Felt At Home Until I Moved To The Southwest, Where, You Know, There's A Mix Of My Culture With The U.s. Culture, And That Was Why I Lived In Texas For 25 Years.

I've Been On Television Saying, "¡vamos A La Biblioteca!". That Was Great. Nobody Had Ever Asked Me.

I Was The Kind Of Person That Was Very Social And Liked To Be With An Entourage And Have Lots Of Parties And Have People Around Me. And Now I Find I Am Much More Satisfied Seeing People One-on-one. I Avoid Crowds, And I Get Really Plagued By People As If They Are Bees Or Something. I Am Talking About My Friends. I Can Only Handle Them One At A Time.

I Was Looking At A Lot Of Experimental Writers, And I Was Very Intrigued By Short-short Fiction, Writers Who Would Write Little Things, What I Call Buttons Now, Little Vignettes.

I Look At Thich Nhat Hanh And I Look At Marshall Rosenberg, And They're More Concerned About The Long Range. And That Long Range Means That You Have To Sit Down With People Who Don't Think Like You. I Want To Reach People Who Don't Think Like Me.

Even Though It's Hard To Believe, But People Who Know Me Really Well Know I'm Shy. I Have To Go Past That Fear.

My Feminism Is Humanism, With The Weakest Being Those Who I Represent, And That Includes Many Beings And Life Forms, Including Some Men.

You Were Given That Pain And That Vision Because You Have Something To Do With It.

I'm From Chicago, So The Chicago Working-class Poets Still Mean A Great Deal To Me.

What I've Learned Is, If I Have To Go Out And Speak, The Best Way To Get People's Attention Is To Tell Them A Story, Tell Them A Story That Came From My Corazón.

The Only Reason We Write - Well, The Only Reason Why I Write; Maybe I Shouldn't Generalize - Is So That I Can Find Out Something About Myself. Writers Have This Narcissistic Obsession About How We Got To Be Who We Are. I Have To Understand My Ancestors - My Father, His Mother And Her Mother - To Understand Who I Am. It All Leads Back To The Narcissistic Pleasure Of Discovering Yourself.

I Live In A Town That's Two And A Half Hours From The Border. I Know People Who Have Lived In San Antonio For Generations, Sometimes Seven Generations, Their Families Are From There, And They Are Of Mexican Descent, And They've Never Gone Farther Than The Border.

I Learned From The Macarturos. I Had Never Been At A Table With A Labor Organizer And A Playwright And A Performance Artist And An Anthropologist And A Human Rights Lawyer. Usually At Most Gatherings, It's All Writers. But Suddenly I Was At A Table With All These Different People And I Learned From Each Of Them, Learned From The Work They're Doing, Learned New Ways To Solve My Problems.

I Don't Close Myself To The Possibility Of Someplace Outside The United States, But It Would Have To Be Someplace With An Indigenous Community, Because That's Where I Feel At Home.

God Made Men By Baking Them In An Oven, But He Forgot About The First Batch, And That's How Black People Were Born. And Then He Was So Anxious About The Next Batch, He Took Them Out Of The Oven Too Soon, So That's How White People Were Made. But The Third Batch He Let Cook Until They Were Golden-golden-golden, And, Honey, That's You And Me.

You Get Good At Being By Yourself And You're Condemned To A Life Sentence Of Solitude. You Think, "wait A Minute! I Should Have Been A Tap Dancer Or Something". But In My Life, I Feel Like I Take My Stories To People Orally.

When You're In That State Of Grief, Any Little Breeze, Any Hello, Any Confrontation, Any Grazing Of Someone Meeting Your Eyes, Might Cause You Suddenly To Burst Into Grief. You Could Be Looking At A Jar Of Peanut Butter In The Supermarket, And Then Start Crying.

If You Just Breathe, And Go Slower, You Will Have Enough Energy. It's Really Important Because There Are People Who Wait In Line, And Your Work Has Changed Their Lives. You Will Need To Listen To Them Because They Are Also Going To Feed You And Give You Confirmation Of The Prayer You Asked Before You Spoke.

I Think There's Some Great Stuff Coming. I Do Feel That. I Think We Have Reached Our Harlem Renaissance.

There's A Lot Of Things That Haven't Been Communicated To Our Communities. I Didn't Know These Things Myself. I Didn't Know That If You Ate Cheap Food, It Was Like Buying Cheap Gasoline, And There Was A Reason Why After An Hour You Get Headaches, Or Youhypoglycemic.

The Truth Has A Strange Way Of Following You, Of Coming Up To You And Making You Listen To What It Has To Say.

The World We Live In Is A House On Fire And The People We Love Are Burning.

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.

Mice And Any Rodentia. Guinea Pigs. Even Rabbits, I Can't Stand. Rabbits Are Cousins To Rats. It's A Class Thing. If You Had To Grow Up With Rats Scampering In Your Backyard, Because The City Services Were Cut In Half And The Population In Your Neighborhood Doubled, Then That Also Is Going To Mean That The Flora And Fauna Are Going To Grow As Well. So That's A Part Of It. That's Why I Can't Go To Hindu Countries Where They Respect Rats And Mice, And I Can't Go Camping.

I Think Diseases Have No Eyes. They Pick With A Dizzy Finger Anyone, Just Anyone.

Even My Mom. I Have To Tell Her, "if You Want A Snack, Don't Go To Bed With Potato Chips. Eat A Handful Of Pistachios And A Handful Of Dates."

Imagine Americans Who Go To Paris. Why Would You Want To Go Where Someone's Going To Disparage You? Why Would You Go Anywhere Where They Treat You Bad? Well, That's How It Is For Us To Go To Mexico. You Have To Be On Your Guard, Because I Think The Mexicans Are Harder On The Mexicans, The Mexican-americans. They Don't See Us As Mexican. I Think Part Of It's A Class Issue And A Color Issue. We're More Connected To Their Servants, So What Are We Doing Staying At A Nice Hotel? There's A Kind Of Shame.

Everything Is Holding Its Breath Inside Me. Everything Is Waiting To Explode Like Christmas. I Want To Be All New And Shiny. I Want To Sit Out Bad At Night, A Boy Around My Neck And The Wind Under My Skirt. Not This Way, Every Evening Talking To The Trees, Leaning Out My Window, Imagining What I Can't See.

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.

I Grew Up With This Kind Of Grocery Store That Caters To The Poor. They Serve You The Worst Food.

You Know That You Wouldn't Take A Baby On A Plane Without Diapers, So When You Leave Your House, Take Care Of You, Like You Would A Baby. Don't Leave Your House Without Packing Some Healthy Things.

I Think There's A Rule That Once You Want To Live Somewhere, You Can't Find A Job.

When We Started Publishing, You Had To Be Better Than Good. You Had To Be Excellent. But As Long As People Are Reading, I Don't Care What They're Reading.

Write About What Makes You Different.

When I Lost My Father, I Thought I Learned About Grief And Transition. However, Nobody Tells You What It's Like To Lose Your Mother. They Don't Tell You That You're Going To Feel Like An Orphan At Whatever Age You Are As An Adult.

We Are Told By Media - Books, Television, Reality Shows - That Heartbreak Is This Terrible Thing And Yet We Should Seek It. We're Told That Heartbreak Is All About Love And We Should Just Go After That High Over And Over Again. We Are Told It Is Healthy To Be Addicted To This Kind Of Behavior And The Highs Associated With Love. But, That's Not All What Heartbreak Is.

People Want You To Be The Ambassador Of Everything. This Happens To Me Especially When I Go To Europe. I Have To Be The Ambassador Of Everything. I Learned This From Elena Poniatowska - Intelligent Woman, Great Lady, One Of My Heroes, One Of My Spiritual Mentors, I Love Her. Someone Is In This Big Museum And They Ask Her, "elenita, What Do You Think About Mexican Women . . ." And She Says, "i Haven't A Clue!"

I Have To Understand What My Strengths And Limitations Are, And Work From A True Place. I Try To Do This As Best I Can While Still Protecting My Writer Self, Which More Than Ever Needs Privacy.

Perhaps The Community You Mentioned Might Not Come To The Story. Sometimes You Have To Take The Story To Them, And Perform It, And That's Another Way That I Get An Alternate Point Of View That Isn't The Official Version Of History Out To A Community. I Feel That's What I've Been Doing Since Caramelo.

When You Speak Words That Are Relevant To People, They Automatically Shut Up And You Know You Are In The Presence Of Some Very Magical Words. It's A Gift When Someone Can Listen And Be Quiet And Not Interrupt.

Think About The Books That You Were Reading At A Certain Crisis In Your Life, What You Were Reading, And That's Because You Needed Them To Nourish Your Alma.

The Mexico - United States Border Was Always Porous. People Have Been Going And Coming Back Since Before The Spaniards Arrived. Now We're Seeing Communities Who Have Family Members On The Other Side Very Frightened. I Feel Saddened For Those Families Divided By Violence. The Whole Border Area Is Under Siege.

The Thoughts Of Letting Go Of Everything I Love Overwhelms Like A Tsunami Of Sorrow.

I Remember When They Started Publishing Latino Fiction Years Ago. You Had To Be Really Good To Get Published. Now You Don't Have To Be That Good.

I Remember I Was Very Taken With A Book Called Dreamtigers By [jorge Luis] Borges. He Was At The University Of Texas, Austin, And They Collected Some Of His Writings And Put Them In A Little Collection. It's Called Dreamtigers In English, But It Doesn't Exist In Spanish. It's A Little Sampler. But That Collection In English Is What Struck Me, Because In There He Has His Poems, And I Was A Poet As Well As A Fiction Writer.

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.

One Of The Books That Has Guided Me In The Last Ten Years Of My Life To Help Me To Be That Leader Is The Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. He's A Vietnamese Monk. He Was Nominated For A Peace Prize By Dr. Martin Luther King.

There Was A Time When I Used To Go To Mexico Every Year. But Then Mexico Changed A Lot - Between 1995 And 2005, Mexico Changed A Lot.

My Idea Was Always To Start With A Small Press And Then Move Up To A National Press. I Had Those Goals For My Career From The Time I Was A Very Young Woman. I Wanted To Win A Local Award, Then I Wanted A State Or National Award. Small Press, Big Press. Some Women Fantasize About Their Weddings, Their Husbands, And Children. I Fantasized About What I Wanted To Accomplish With My Books.

I Am A Woman, And I Am A Latina. Those Are The Things That Make My Writing Distinctive. Those Are The Things That Give My Writing Power.

I'm Filled With A New Joy Mixed With Old Grief.

I Have To Say My Favorite Stories Are Ghost Stories. I Don't Like To See These Made-up Monster Films Or Scary Films With Ghosts. It Doesn't Do Anything To Me. But A Real Ghost Story That Someone Tells Me, That I Like.

For Me, A Story's A Story If People Want To Hear It; It's Very Much Based On Oral Storytelling. And For Me, A Story Is A Story When People Give Me The Privilege Of Listening When I'm Speaking It Out Loud.

I Was Reading All These Male Writers Who Were Doing Wild And Wonderful Things. It Gave Me Permission To Experiment.

A Lot Of People Mistake The Persona That I Create In Poetry And Fiction With Me. A Lot Of People Claim To Know Me Who Don't Really Know Me. They Know The Work, Or They Know The Persona In The Work, And They Confuse That With Me, The Writer. They Don't Realize That The Persona Is Also A Creation And A Fabrication, A Composite Of My Friends And Myself All Pasted Together.

Sometimes Hearing The Stories Is Going To Change People's Lives Much More Than If They Read It.

When I Was At Home, I Wasn't Shy. I Was The Clown At Home, Because I Was Loved. It Was In The Outside World That I Was Judged And I Wasn't Loved. That Was Very Clear To Me, That I Wasn't Loved. So I Became Very Quiet. You Know, Those Little Girls You See In Those Pictures That Look Like They Want To Hunch, I Was Trying To Disappear Into My Shoulder Blades. The Quietest Person In The Classroom, That Was Me. But That Wasn't Me At Home.

When I Was A Child, I Was Very Shy, And There's Still A Part Of Me That's Very Shy.

I Realize That It's Like Spices In The Kitchen. I Need That Turmeric. I'm Sorry, But Cinnamon Isn't Going To Substitute . I Feel That I Can Teach My Listener About A New Word They Can Use Too. "well, What Words Are Part Of My Own Community, Even If I'm Monolingual, That I'm Not Allowing Myself To Use In A Public Sphere?"

I Feel Like I Am In A Box Of Bees When I Am In A Room With Lots Of People And I'm Just Looking For The Door. I Find Myself Getting More And More Agoraphobic As Time Goes On.

I Believe Love Is Always Eternal. Even If Eternity Is Only Five Minutes.

She Became Politically Conscious Thanks To Studs Terkel And The Radio. She Started Reading All The Books We Brought Home From College And Was A Great Fan Of Noam Chomsky. She Was A Real Lefty And Yet Was Not Able To Meet Her Dream Of Becoming An Artist. She Got Drafted Into Motherhood Big Time - Seven Kids - And That Wasn't The Life That She Had Planned. So She Opened The Path So That I Could Be The Artist That She Wanted To Be.

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've Put Up With Too Much, Too Long, And Now I'm Just Too Intelligent, Too Powerful, Too Beautiful, Too Sure Of Who I Am Finally To Deserve Anything Less.

I Began Writing As An Experimental Writer.

I Was Silent As A Child, And Silenced As A Young Woman; I Am Taking My Lumps And Bumps For Being A Big Mouth, Now, But Usually From Those Whose Opinion I Don't Respect.

And The Nice Thing About Writing A Novel Is You Take Your Time, You Sit With The Character Sometimes Nine Years, You Look Very Deeply At A Situation, Unlike In Real Life When We Just Kind Of Snap Something Out.

I Was Reading Carl Sandburg And Gwendolyn Brooks, And I'm Still Very, Very Deeply Moved By Gwendolyn Brooks's Life And Her Work.

If Educators Were Really Understanding Of That, They'd Say, "you Know What? Forget About Bilingual, We're Going To Do Multilingual Education." So Children Are Ready For The New Millennium. We're Way Behind Compared To Countries In Europe. If We Were Multilingual, Imagine How Much You Would Learn About Your Own Culture, About The Sensibilities Of What's Important In Your Own Culture.

You Can't Erase What You Know. You Can't Forget Who You Are.

Believe It Or Not, Mexican Cooking, For Those Of You Who Have Not Gone Farther South Than Taco Bell, Uses A Lot Of Vegetables. But Those Vegetables Were Not Brought Here, Like Corn Mushrooms, Huitlacoche, Or Squash Blossoms.

'hispanic' Is English For A Person Of Latino Origin Who Wants To Be Accepted By The White Status Quo. 'latino' Is The Word We Have Always Used For Ourselves.

Challenging The Status Quo

Perhaps The Greatest Challenge Has Been Trying To Keep My Time To Myself And My Private Life Private In Order To Do My Job. Everything That Is Most Mine Belongs To Everyone Now.

We Have All This Courage As Writers, But Then There's This Fear.

Believe Me, That Nap Is Better Than Sitting There For Three Hours And Nothing's Coming. I've Learned That Even If I've Slept Nine Hours And I Just Finished Breakfast, If I Feel Sleepy When I'm In Front Of That Computer, I'll Take A Nap. And It Really Does Help.

I Do Travel A Lot, Because I Need Oxygen, I Need To Go To Places To Meet People Who Aren't Upset At Me Because I'm Asking For Peace.

My Friend, Dennis Mathis, Was Reading Eastern European And Japanese Experimental Writers, And I Brought The Latin American Writers To His Attention, So We Exchanged Books And Bounced Off One Another.

One Of The Things I Like To Pack, That I Take With Me All The Time, Is My Virgensita De Guadalupe. It Doesn't Take Much Room In Your Suitcase. If You Have One That Isn't So Fancy, You Can Use It On The Plane When You're Scared.

Even If You Don't Believe In God, You Have To Believe In Love.

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.

I Wish Somebody Had Told Me Love Does Not Die, That We Can Continue To Receive And Give Love After Death.

To Me, The Virgen De Guadalupe Is Just A Vessel For Me To Recognize My Own God Within Myself.

I Tell People To Write The Stories That You're Afraid To Talk About, The Stories You Wish You'd Forget, Because Those Have The Most Power. Those Are The Ones That Have The Most Strength When You Give Them As A Testimony.

I Can't Stand It When People Say, "if You're Writing A Novel, You Should Read This And That." Because It's Like Giving Someone Another Person's Prescription. How Do You Know That's What They Need?

People Like To Blame Mexican Food, But Look At What's Happening Globally, Look At All The Fast Foods And Products Filled With Trans Fat. Before The Mexican Revolution, A Hundred Years Ago, People Were Eating What Now Macrobiotics Tells Us To Eat, Corn, Black Beans, Rice. That's What People Were Eating - And Chile Peppers. That's A Healthy Diet.

I Want To Thank You, Especially Those People Who Are Agnostic Or Atheist. I Don't Mean Any Offense By The Things I Said Of The Spirit World. Thank You For Allowing Me To Speak About The Spiritual, Because I Can't Talk About My Life Or Writing Without Mentioning That.

When I Was Very Young I Was Reading A Lot Of Latin American Fiction, Which Later Would Be Called "boom Fiction."

Some People Need Flowers, Some People Need Dandelions. It's Medicine, It's What You Need At That Time In Your Life.

Marshall Rosenberg Talks About How We Can Create Peace In The Communities We Work With. He's Been Traveling To Warring Nations To Create Peace Within Those Countries.

What Do We Call Our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe In The Future, It Won't Be Just Latino, Maybe It'll Be More Multi-multi, Because, You Know, People Are Such Fusions Now, Of So Many Different Cultures.

The Stories Are What No One Wants To Talk About. So You Make Up A Story Because No One Is Going To Tell You The Truth.

I Can't Go To Hindu Countries Where They Respect Rats And Mice, And I Can't Go Camping. I Don't Like To Go Into Subways, Because I Always See Them. Rats Are Like My Naguales [kindred Animal Spirits]. They Follow Me.

We Need To Write Because So Many Of Our Stories Are Not Being Heard. Where Could They Be Heard In This Era Of Fear And Media Monopolies? Writing Allows Us To Transform What Has Happened To Us And To Fight Back Against What's Hurting Us. While Not Everyone Is An Author, Everyone Is A Writer And I Think That The Process Of Writing Is Deeply Spiritual And Liberatory.

There's A Lot Of People That Need These Stories, And They Can't Come To My Book, So I'm Going To Be The Bookmobile And I'm Going To Come To Them.

I Know The Books That I Need To Help Me To Be Wiser Than My Years And Be Kinder And More Compassionate And More Patient Than I Really Am.

To Tell You The Truth, I Think It's About That We Shouldn't Get Our Driver's Licenses Till Real Late In Life.

One Of The Things Thich Nhat Hanh Taught Me: He Says, "when You're In A Hurry, Go Slower." That Works Every Time, Unless You're Trying To Catch A Plane.

You Meditate And Then You Can Put On Your Pajamas, Or You Can Imagine You're Wearing Your Pajamas, And You Talk About Your Piece Of Writing In The Language You Would Use If You Were Wearing Your Pajamas And You Were Seated At A Table With Your Very Good Friend. And You Wouldn't Have To Get All Dressed Up Or Clean Up The Table.

My Spanish Is A Daughter's Spanish. I Write, But My Spanish Really Is Very Limited.

We Tend To Think Of Orphans As Being The Protagonist Of Stories We Read When We're Kids, And Yet Here You Are: You're An Adult, You're Supposed To Manage, You're Supposed To Get Over It, You're Supposed To Go On With Your Life, And You Feel Like A Lost Child.

Everything That Is Most Mine Belongs To Everyone Now.

I Want To Write An Essay Called "fear Of Mexico," Because I Always Feel Like Mexico's This Lover That Never Writes To Me.

When I'm Starting To Feel, "how Many More People Are There?" I Go Slower. I Ask Questions, And That Person Engaging With Me Gives Me Energy.

One Of The Things We Learned From That Panel Is The Way Poor Communities Use A Library Is Very Different From Wealthy Communities. But The Way The Library Books Are Measured Are By How Many Books Are Taken Out. And People In Poor Communities Sometimes Won't Take The Book Out Because They're Afraid To. They're Afraid Of Losing It And Not Being Able To Replace It.

When I Was Writing Caramelo The Last Couple Of Years, A Sixty-hour Work Week Was Normal. And Now I'm Lucky If I Have Eight Hours.

Sometimes I Feel I Can't Quite Master My Written And Spoken Spanish, Because I'm Too Much A Student Of English. I Would Need Another Lifetime To Learn It.

I Learned When I Was A Student In Connecticut. I Had An Italian-american Teacher Who Gave Me Classes For A Week, And Then Said, "okay, You're Ready." And I Wasn't Ready. I Didn't Know How To Drive!. But He Knew The Policeman Who Gave The Test. And That's How I Got Through.

When You Edit, You Imagine Your Enemy Is Seated On The Other Side Of The Table. Your Enemy! And Your Enemy Is Going To Read That With A Viciousness, Because He Knows Where You Didn't Work On It. He's Going To Shake It And Really Aim For That Jugular. So You Are Going To Polish, And Revise, And Rewrite, And Cut Out, And Shape It, So That Your Enemy Has No Place To Grip It. That's How You Revise.

You Know, If You've Got Nine People That You've Got To Get A Treat For - Because You Do Have Sweet Food, Even If You're Poor - You Can't Go Out And Buy A Sara Lee Cake. You Buy The Big Bag Of Cookies, Those Chocolate And Vanilla Ones With The Icing. That Has A Lot Of Trans Fat In It, But It Goes A Long Way With A Lot Of People.

There Are Many Latino Writers As Talented As I Am, But Because We Are Published Through Small Presses, Our Books Don't Count. We Are Still The Illegal Aliens Of The Literary World.

To This Day, On My Cheat Days From My Diet, Which Are New Year's Eve And My Birthday, I Buy Luxury Foods That Are Very Indicative Of My Class.

All Of My Works Are Performance Pieces, As Is True For Many Writers Of Color, Writers Who Have Indigenous Roots - Because Our Basis Is Spoken Word.

Post 9/11, We've Seen Such Disastrous Policies On The Border. I Live Two And A Half Hours Away From The Border, And I've Seen Changes For The Communities There. I Feel Like It's An Occupied Zone. We're Losing Our Rights, And Both Sides Of The Border Are Terrified. The Mexican Population And The U.s. Population Are United In Fear.

I Think A Lot Of Education Has To Be Involved. If They Would Have Alternative Items, So That, Say, For A Dollar More, You Can Get Breakfast Tacos Stuffed With Egg Whites, And Olive Oil, And Avocado; Not Guacamole, Because They Put The Salt In It. Just Ask For Fresh Avocado Slices, And You Could Have That.

If We Got An Educational Program Going, We Could Tell People, "instead Of Butter, Use Avocado." That's Something We Eat, It Has The Good Fat, And It Has A Good Texture, And It Tastes Better. Just Imagine If You Substituted That. Or If We Switched To Olive Oil, The Extra Virgin Olive Oil, We Could Still Have Our Taquitos, But Put A Little Oil On Them And Put Them In The Oven And Bake Them.

[jorge Luis Borges] Had Short Stories, And I Was Trying To Learn How To Write Short Stories, And Then He Had These Things In The Middle That Were Like Fables, And I Loved Hearing Fables.

Heartbreak Allows Us To Also Experience Joy And Love But You Have To Walk Through Heartbreak To Even Know What Joy Is. Heartbreak Is A Constant And It Is Even Necessary. It Allows Us The Opportunity Of Introspection And Exploration. Those Processes Are What Is Necessary To Write And Engage In The Arts.

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.

You Can Try Reading Books That Will Help You Be A Leader, Like Marshall Rosenberg And Thich Nhat Hanh. Be Very Humble And Say, "i Don't Know Why. I Don't Feel Qualified, But I Accept This Role That You Gave Me, And So Help Me."

Heartbreak Makes Us Stronger; It's An Opportunity For Spiritual Growth. How Can You Understand Someone Else's Pain If You Have Not Yourself Suffered?

I Feel That I Can Teach My Listener About A New Word They Can Use Too.

I Think That We Need To Measure How We Give Dollars To Libraries By Need. And The Communities That Are Poor, In My Opinion, Should Get More Because You Have To Do More Outreach.

Writing Poetry Helps Me To Write My Fiction; Each Thing Helps The Other.

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky . You Can Fall Asleep And Wake Up Drunk On Sky, And Sky Can Keep You Safe When You Are Sad. Here There Is Too Much Sadness And Not Enough Sky. Butterflies Too Are Few And So Are Flowers And Most Things That Are Beautiful. Still, We Take What We Can Get And Make The Best Of It.

It's What's Available To The Poor Communities. They Do Buy Healthy Stuff, You Know, But The Lettuce Is Usually Iceberg Lettuce And To Get Any Taste, They Have To Use All That Ranch Dressing.

Packing Is Important Because A Lot Of Times I Have To Go Places Where I Have To Be In Four Different Climates In Three Weeks. For Example, Bosnia, Ireland, Rome. Different Parts Of Italy. You Have To Pack And Get It Down To A Science.

We Started An Organization That's The Only Sub-organization Of The Macarthur Foundation And We Are Called The Macarturos. Usually When I Win Something, I'm The Only One Of My Ethnicity To Get It, But This Time I Met All These Latinos, And I Was So Excited. I'd Meet Someone And I'd Go, [...] "can You Come To San Antonio?" And They'd Go, "oh Yeah." [...] And Suddenly I Had Twelve People That Said They Would Come. And I Didn't Know How It Was Going To Be. And That's How The Macarturos Became A Reality, Where These Very Generous Geniuses Come To San Antonio And Work Together.

You Don't Have To Be The Specialist On Everything. You Can Try To Inform Yourself.

I Think The Erotic Is Very Spiritual, And I Never See That Spiritual Dimension When You Look At Collections Of Erotica. That's Always Missing For Me.

I Feel The Fear Touches On Something Deeper. A Sense Perhaps Of, "my Life Is Speeding Past Me And I Can't Get A Handle On It."

I Always Tell People That I Became A Writer Not Because I Went To School But Because My Mother Took Me To The Library. I Wanted To Become A Writer So I Could See My Name In The Card Catalog.

I Learn Through Listening And Watching Other Performers That Are Very Good, Like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

You Know How Sometimes You Meet Writers That Are So Full Of Themselves? They Feel Really Proud That They Wrote Something . But What They Don't Understand - And I Like To Tell This To Writers - Is That Writing Is Like Fishing. It's Just Like Fishing. If You Don't Fish That Often, You're Not Going To Catch That Many Fish.

I Think Of Reading As Like A Medicine Cabinet.

I Am One Who Leaves The Table Like A Man, Without Putting Back The Chair Or Picking Up The Plate

[thich Nhat Hanh] The One That Revolutionized Buddhism. Instead Of Being Monks Just Engaged In Meditation, It Was Active Buddhism. You Went Out And Felt The Ills Of The Community Around You. Instead Of Retreating To A Monastery, You Were Out In The Streets Working. And He's Been A Great Help To Me, Just Reading His Book, So I Don't Feel Helpless About What I Can Do About All The Violence Around Me.

I Think That It's Not Enough To Do The Little Band-aid Things Of Having Celebrities Come And Read To Children. Not That We Don't Need To Read To Children, But We Don't Need To Just Do It One Time And Feel Good About It. I Think We Need To Think Long Range About Poor People And Their Relationship To Libraries.

If You Can't Fall Asleep, Learn How To Meditate. I Would Recommend You Listen To A Beautiful Tape Called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning And Evening, 1998]. It Was The One That Got Me Out Of My Writer's Block When I Was Writing Caramelo. It's By Carolyn Myss.

Something I Always Tell Students Is, When You're Writing Something, You Want To Write The First Draft And You Want It To Come Out Easily In The Beginning. If You're Afraid To Say What You Really Have To Say, You Stammer. When You're Thinking Of Your Listener, That's When You Start Stuttering And It's Just Because You're Nervous That Your Listener Is Passing Judgment.

Thinking Of You

I'm A Witch Woman--high On Tobacco And Holy Water. I'm A Woman Delighted With Her Disasters. They Give Me Something To Do. A Profession Of Sorts...i Have The Magic Of Words. The Power To Charm And Kill At Will.

If You Start Thinking About Who's Going To Read It [you're Writing], Or What Grade Will You Get, Or Is It Going To Win That Award, Or Are You Going To Get Into This Graduate Program, You're Blocking The Light, And The Light Is That Guidance And Love We Get When We Open Up Our Hearts And Are Guided By Our Higher Selves, Or God, Or The Buddha Lupe [buddha And The Virgin Of Guadalupe Fused Together, As They Are In The Tattoo On Sandra's Right Arm], Or Whatever You Believe In, Or Love.

There Are Still Many Writers Out In The Bay, Extraordinary Writers Like Gina Valdez, A Poet Who I Just Saw In Portland. We Have Young People Like Eduardo Corral, Who Won The Yale Younger Poets Award. José Antonio Rodriguez, Published By Luis Rodriguez. But There Are Only A Few Of Us Who Are Paid Attention To In New York. There Are Legions Behind Us Who Are Not.

That's All You Have To Ask From Yourself Writing A Book. That It's The Best You Can Do And That You Did It Without Any Ego Involved And That You Did It For Somebody Else. That's The Best You Can Do.

One Of The Things I Used To Dream Of Is That If I Could Just Be Funny Like Red Skelton, If I Could Be A Comedian Like Red Skelton - That's What I Watched On Tv - Then Maybe I Would Have Friends. I Just Remember That If I Told Stories To My Friends, They Listened. And In My Family, With Nine People Talking At The Same Time, It's Really Hard To Get People To Listen To You. We Were All Craving Attention.

When I Have A Writing Workshop, I Like To Have People That Are Anthropologists And People Who Are Poking Around In Other Fields, I Like To Have Them All In The Same Workshop, And Not Worry About Genre. I Like To Mix It Up, Because The Kind Of Comments You Can Get From A Fiction Writer About Your Poetry Are Going To Be Very Different Than What You'll Get From A Poet. Or The Comments You'll Get From A Filmmaker About Your Performance Are Going To Be Very Different. My Writing Workshop Is About Mixing It Up, Cross-pollinating, Not Only In Genres But In Occupations.

Books Are Medicine And You Have To Take The Right Medicine That You Need At That Moment Or That Day Or That Time In Your Life.

I Was Very Lucky. I Don't Know German, Or Dutch, Or Chinese, Or Thai. I Don't Know Them, So I Can't Judge, So I Have To Go On The Word Of The Publisher That It's A Good Translation.

Every Book Changes My Writing Because I'm Always Trying To Do Something I Didn't Do Before. I Try To Do What's Hard For Me, What I Haven't Done In The Past.

If You're Poor, Potato Chips Are The Food Of Life For You. It's The Caviar.

I Never Paid Attention When People Said, "that's Gotta Be Poetry. That's Gotta Be Fiction," Except When I Was In A Graduate Program, And You Had To Claim Your Genre.

Don't Be Afraid To Say What You Don't Know, And Speak For What You Do Know. Say, "i Can't Speak For All Latinas, But I Can Speak For Me And Tell You Very, Very Honestly."

What I Recommend Is This: After You've Talked To Everybody, Go Take A Nap! Take A Nap. Your Body Really Needs To Sleep. It's Like Washing Your Face. If You Can't Afford A Three-hour Nap, Do A One-hour Nap. If You Can't Afford A One-hour Nap, Do Half An Hour. If You Can't Afford Half An Hour, Do Fifteen Minutes.

I've Come To Some Balance Now And Calmness. If Anything Happened To Me And I Got Hit By A Bus - I Hope This Doesn't Happen, But If Something Happened - My Body Of Work Is Something I Could Rest On. I Don't Feel, "oh God, I Have To Hurry Up . . ."

So How Are You Supposed To Learn How To Drive With This Guy Yapping At You? My Brothers Were The Ones Who Got To Practice. So When You Have To Get On The Expressway, You're Afraid. That's What I Think. That's Why I Take Back Routes On Two-lane Highways.

I Like To Mix It Up, Because The Kind Of Comments You Can Get From A Fiction Writer About Your Poetry Are Going To Be Very Different Than What You'll Get From A Poet.

I Like To Think About The Bestseller List As, "this Is The Medicine Cabinet Of A Very Sick Country." Let Me Look And See What They're Reading That Isn't Nourishing Them.

Those Of Us Who Are Writers And Have To Perform To Communities That Aren't Used To Coming To Book Events, I Would Recommend Taking Some Theater.

As Indigenous Peoples, We Know There Is More To The World. We Know Spirits Exist. We Know As Women, Because We're Especially Attuned To This Kind Of Knowledge, That Spirits Exist And Have A Presence In Our Lives. Some Of Us Are Gifted And Can Communicate With The Spirit World. Not Everyone Has That Gift And Can Perceive The Borders Between The Living And The Dead And Our Society Actively Discourages Us Of Exploring The Knowledge Of What Many Of Us Have Already Always Known In Our Cultures.

I Am Not In Touch With Other Writers. I Don't Have Very Much Contact With Other Writers. I Don't Get Invited To These Things Or I Don't Go To Them. I Hate Panels. I Speak To Librarians And To Conferences Of English Teachers. That's What I Do: Teachers And Librarians. And High School Kids.

People Know When You're Speaking From El Corazón. You Have That Pain. Take That Pain And Do Something With It. That's Very Powerful.

[writing Is Like Fishing]. You Don't Bow Because You Made The Fish. That's The Difference. If You Know That, Then You Bow For Your Labor.you Crafted, You Worked, You Put In Those Hours So That You Could Catch That Fish. But You Didn't Make That Fish. You Just Caught The Fish. That Will Help You Stay Humble And Bow For The Right Reason And Be Very Lucid About The Work You Do.

The Ideal For Me Is To Mix It Up. When I Have A Writing Workshop, I Like To Have People That Are Anthropologists And People Who Are Poking Around In Other Fields, I Like To Have Them All In The Same Workshop, And Not Worry About Genre.

I Was Reading Emily Dickinson And Edwin Arlington Robinson, But These Weren't The Poets That Influenced Me. I Think Gwendolyn Brooks Influenced Me Because She Wrote About Chicago, And She Wrote About Poor People. And She Influenced Me In My Life By Giving Me A Blurb. I Would See Her In Action, And She Listened To Every Single Person. She Didn't Say, "oh, I'm Tired. I Gotta Go." She Was There, And Present, With Every Single Person. She's One Of The Great Teachers.

You Know How Women Have This Clock When They Want To Have A Baby? I Had This Clock Where I Wanted To Win A National Award By Thirty, Be At A Big Press By Thirty-five. I Was Always Working With These Self-driven Goals.

There's All Kinds Of Ways To Wean Yourself Off Of Sugar - Because It Is Like An Addiction.

My Readers Are As Diverse As Any Group You Will Ever See. Something That Booksellers Always Tell Me. That They Are Always Surprised At The Kind Of People That Come To My Readings. That They Are Such A Mix Of Ages And Colors. It Looks Like People Spilling Out Of An Elevator.

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 Can Get By And Chatter And Talk And Tell Funny Stories, Make People Laugh, But I Don't Have As Many Words, I Don't Have The Vocabulary. I Think If I Forced Myself To Read In Spanish - You Know, I Always Say I'm Going To, But I Lose My Patience Reading In Spanish, Because I Really Do Read The Way A Third Grader Does, Mouthing The Words. That Takes A Long Time!

If You Know Two Cultures And Two Languages, That Intermediate Place, Where The Two Don't Perfectly Meet, Is Really Interesting.

You Know How They Say, "find Your Voice"? That's Your Voice, In Your Pajamas. And It Doesn't Mean That You're Going To Publish It Or Print It Or People Are Going To See You In Your Pajamas. It Just Means You Are Going To Construct The Foundation In Your Pajamas, In That Voice.

I Was One Of Those People Raised By A Woman Who Was What I Call A Prisoner Of War. She Was Captured, She Didn't Want To Be There, She Was Unhappy, She Was Banging Away In The Kitchen, The Way That A Prisoner Would Bang On Her Jail Cell, You Know, Really Unhappy. She Had To Cook For Nine People With Really Little Money, So She Really Just Got Burned Out. So I Didn't Know That You Could Actually Cook And It Would Be Calming, Pleasurable.

I Realize That When I Moved Out Of My Father’s House I Shocked And Frightened Him Because I Needed A Room Of My Own, A Space Of My Own To Reinvent Myself.

You Know, You Want To Be Outrageous When You're Young, So All The Young People Say, "oooh . . ." Now My Tactics Are Different.

This Is The Age Of Fear And So Many Of Us Feel Afraid To Speak Out About What Has Happened To Our Lives In The Wake Of 9/11. Television Promotes The World As A Scary Place For The United States And This Justifies Peeling Away Every Element Of Privacy We Had Before. The Media Is Monopolized So We Don't Even Hear A Lot Of Dissent About This New Era.

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.

There [dreamtigers By Jorge Luis Borges] Were These Little Fablesque Things, You Know, Dream Tigers, Beautiful, Beautiful Pieces That When You Read Them Had The Power Of A Long Piece, But They Were Prose, And They Had The Power Of Poetry, In That The Last Line Wasn't The End, It Was A Reverberation, Like When You Tap On A Glass Made Of Crystal, And It Goes Ping.

My Trainer Taught Me, Because He's Iranian, And That's A Beautiful Snack [pistachios]. I Have Some With Me, Actually, In My Bag. You Could Eat That On A Plane Instead Of The Salted Nuts. And A Serving Size A Day Is The Size Of Your Hand, Not The Size Of Your Head!

I Prefer To Go To The Little Towns Now, Because In Little Towns People Are Kind. I Like Going To Tepotzlán.

I Can't Hang Around With Lots Of People These Days Because I Am Hypersensitive. So When I Am Around A Lot Of People Or A Big Roomful Of People I Get Almost Autistic. I Get Overwhelmed And Really Tired. So I Don't Like Being Around Large Groups.

I Was Raised In Chicago, So Always Used Latina. It's What My Father And Brothers Called Ourselves, When We Meant The Entire Spanish-speaking Community Of Chicago.

It Takes A Long Time For Women To Feel It's Alright To Be Chingona. To Aspire To Be A Chingona!...you Are Saying, 'this Is My Camino, This Is My Path And I'm Gonna Follow It, Regardless Of What Culture Says.' I Don't Think The Church Likes Chingonas. I Don't Think The State Likes Chingonas.! And Fathers Definitely Do Not Like Chingonas. And Boyfriends Don't Like Chingonas. But, You Know, I Remain Optimistic. I Will Meet A Man Who Likes A Chingona, One Day. One Day, My Chingon Will Come.

I'm Just As Unhappy About San Antonio As I Was About Chicago. If You're Unhappy About Certain Things, You're Unhappy Everywhere.

When You Become A Driver, They Don't Tell You That You Have To Switch Languages. The Drivers Have Their Own Language And They Don't Tell You That As Girls. How Am I Supposed To Know That Blinking Light Means Something? There Are All These Little Languages That You Have To Know, But You Don't Know.

I Don't Know What The Definition Of A Short Story Is, And I Don't Even Care To Answer That Question. That's Something Somebody In Academia Would Think About. I Just Want To Tell A Story, And If People Listen, And If It Stays With You, It's A Story.

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 Think One Of The Great Primordial Fears We Have Once We Become Conscious Of Our Aloneness As Children Is The Fear Of Losing Our Mother. We Have That From The Moment We Realize We Can Lose Her Just In The Supermarket. As A Child, It Was More Terrifying Than Arithmetic.

The Ego's Blocking The Light From Coming.

Friends Started Saying, "oh, Don't Come. No Vengas. It's Dangerous For Us, And We Live Here." Then There's Also The Issue, If You Go Back, And You Happen To Be Mexican-american, You Get Treated Very Differently [in Mexico] Than If You're Blond. If You Say Something Wrong, They Say, "why Don't You Learn Your Mother Tongue?"

I Was Raised A Catholic, But With Very Liberal Parents, So I Had To Find My Spirituality. I've Been Looking For It Since I Was A Child. I Would Find It In Pieces Of Art, Music, Flowers, Trees. Now I've Come Full Circle Finding God In Clouds, Flowers, And Trees.

Many Books That You Read, They Have Those Disclaimers That Say That, "none Of The Events And None Of The People Are Based On Real Life" And So On... Well, I Don't Believe That. I Think That As Human Beings Many People Touch Us, Especially People We Love The Most And We Can't Help But Do Character Sketches When We Go To Our Art.

I Don't Want To Blame Anybody, But I Just Want To Tell You That The Process Of Writing Is Antisocial, So On The Days That You Have Something Really Important To Write, Go From Lying Down Directly To Your Notepad Or Your Computer. Do Not Talk.

I Think No Matter What You Do You Can't Please Everybody. You Have To Ask Yourself, "did I Do What I Set Out To Do?"

The Most Powerful Speaking You Can Do Is The Speaking That Comes From Your Heart And Your Love.

I Had A Mother Who Walked To The Library With Me, And You Can't Walk To A Lot Of Libraries In San Antonio Because - Guess What? - There Are No Sidewalks, Except In The Neighborhoods. And They're Across Big Boulevards, And It's So Hot, You Can't Even Walk To The Corner. So Things Like That Affect How Children Can Get To Libraries. So There Are A Lot Of Things Involved.

You Have To Remember That Writing Itself Is So Solitary. You Start Writing Because You're Lonely.

One Way To Get Very Humble Is To Dedicate The Work You're Going To Do To Your Community.

By Community I Mean That Community You Have A Special Vision For, That Only You See, That No One Else In A Room Sees. That Special Community In Pain, That Through A Pain You've Suffered, You're Able To Have That Vision, That Super-ray Vision.

If We Were Multilingual, Imagine How Much You Would Learn About Your Own Culture, About The Sensibilities Of What's Important In Your Own Culture.

You Know How Sometimes You're Talking To People Who Love You And Give You Unconditional Love, And You Say, "but You Know What? Let Me Back Up. I Forgot To Say . . ."you Can Do That, Right? You Don't Hesitate And Say, "oh My God! I Forgot To Say That!". You Just Speak! And You Say It All, Until You Have Nothing More To Say. And That's Your First Draft. It's Done.

Unconditional Love

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