Background Image

...

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.

-Sandra Cisneros

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When I Have A

Sandra Cisneros

...

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.

Views: 9972

Topic

More From Sandra Cisneros

I Don't Really Think Our Government At Heart Wants Peace. So I Urge You, Write To Mrs. Laura Bush, Because She Reads.

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

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

Every Writer I Admire Is My Teacher. If You Look At It, And If You Care To Read Carefully Enough And To Read And Reread A Text, You Teach Yourself Something About Craft.

I Always Have To Have Sweet And Salty. I Know Some Of You Are Going To Say, "oh, I Tried Dates. I Hate Them." That's Probably Because You Had The Ones That Were On The Shelf For Three Years. Go To Some Healthy Place And Get The Fresh Ones, And You Will Just Love Them. You'll Start Eating Them And Think They're So Good.

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.

The Good Thing About Dennis [ Mathis] Is, Even Though He's A White, He Respected That I Was Doing Something Quirky With My English. He Loved It When I Would Mix Up The Americanisms And Say, "that's Water Over The Dam."

The Ability To Be Present With Every Single Person And Engage Was A Great Model For Me Of The Work That A Writer Needs To Do. Writers, Living Or Dead, Still Guide Me In Many Ways.

Each Book Gets Harder, Each Book Gets Harder And Harder. I Always Feel Like Crying When I Have To Write.

You Know, We Should Have Cards Like The Deaf Have. "can't Talk, I'm Writing Today."

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.

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'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.

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.

Write About What Makes You Different.

How Can Art Make A Difference In The World?

Making A Difference

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."

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.

I Have To Say That The Traditional Role Is Kind Of A Myth. I Think The Traditional Mexican Woman Is A Fierce Woman.

There Are A Few Of The Authors That I Think Have Made A Great Big Impact On My Life. The Way I Used To Do Things When I Was Younger Was More About Being Outrageous, And There Was A Lot Of Ego Involved In That.

I Would Drive On Streets That Were One-way And Think, "why Are They All Honking At Me?"

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Two Things You Need To Ask For, To Open Up That Channel, So You Get The Light. One Is Humility, Because Our Ego Is Always Going To Block That Guidance, And So You Ask For Humility.and The Second Thing You're Going To Ask For Is Courage, Because What You're Going To Be Asked To Do Is Bigger Than What You Think You Can Do.

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.

You Want To Be Able To Say Anything When You Do Your First Draft, Because Some Of That Goofy Stuff That You Think Has Nothing To Do With It Is Probably Where The Mother Lode Is.

What You're Going To Be Asked To Do Is Bigger Than What You Think You Can Do. It's Always Bigger Than What You Think You Can Handle, But You're Never Going To Be Given Something You Can't Handle.

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.

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.

Instead Of Putting Cheese With Ranchero Sauce, Chile Is Really Very Good For You. If You Put That In, You Get Flavoring, So You're Not Eating Bland Food, Especially If You're Used To Spicy Food.

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."

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

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

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.

Even If We Don't Know If God Exists, We Can Be Certain Love Exists, Because Its Power Transcends Death.

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.

You'll Change. You'll See. Wait Till You Meet Mr. Right.

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 Try To Be As Honest About What I See And To Speak Rather Than Be Silent, Especially If It Means I Can Save Lives, Or Serve Humanity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Had No Concept Of This [healthy Food] Until Very, Very Late In Life, Thanks To A Trainer/nutritionist That I Met Who Has Been Working With Me Since I Was Forty-five.

There's No Perfect Place, There's No Wonderful Utopia.

Your Prospective Employer, Or The Person You Have A Crush On, Or The Person You Want To Talk To. You're Judging Yourself, You Know, Thinking About Your Listener. You're Not Thinking About What You're Saying. And That Same Thing Happens When You Write.

Thinking About You

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.

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.

[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.

I Also Learned To Tell A Story. I Think I Learned From Poetry How To Time A Story. Poetry's Timing, Beats And Pauses. That White Space On The Page Is As Important As The Black. The Bottom Of The Page Is Blackout. It's Performance.

I'm Learning A Lot By Reading Teachers Like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They Teach Me Because I Feel Like I Have A Responsibility To The Communities That I Speak To.

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

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

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?"

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.

I Have To Take Care Of The House, And The Dogs, And The Macondo Board Meetings, All Those E-mails, The Letters That Are Going To Fans. And You've Got To Pay Bills. These Things Eat Up Your Time. You Have To Prepare And Pack To Go On That Trip. Then When You Come Back You Have To File All That Stuff, Answer All That Mail, And That's Not Even Washing The Clothes Or Any Of That. So It Takes As Many Days As I've Been Away To Come Back To Normal And To Get Quiet.

My Mom Was A Frustrated Woman, Like So Many Unhappy Women Who Didn't Get The Opportunities They Wanted.

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.

Why Don't We Have People Like Thich Nhat Hanh Or Marshall Rosenberg And Nelson Mandela Solving Violent Situations In A Peaceful Way?

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.

You Don't Want Somebody Who Doesn't Know His Own Heart, Do You? You'll Find Someone Who's Brave Enough To Love You. Someday. One Day. Not Today.

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

I Began Writing As An Experimental Writer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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.

Get Yourself Empty In The Eastern Sense. Not In The Western Sense. In The Western Sense When We Feel Empty We Feel Lonely, Miserable, But In The Eastern Sense - "i'm So Empty, Because I'm Filled With Everything, And I'm Connected To Everything." It's Very Energizing. You Want That Kind Of Emptiness, Whatever You Have To Do To Get Yourself Quiet.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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?

I Hope I'm Not Just Looked As A Writer That Is Popular But As A Writer Of Literary Value.

Mexico Is Only A Memory Of Childhood Safety.

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.

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.

I've Always Read Broadly: Literary Fiction, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Chick Lit, Historical, Dystopian, Nonfiction, Memoir. I've Even Read Westerns. I Prefer Female Protagonists.

I Know The American Library Association Has Models For Working With The Poor. They Do Have That, And I Think That We Really Need To Put Our Efforts - If We Want To Think Long-range And Invest In The Community So That We Don't Have To, You Know, Invest In Prisons - Into Making A Change, Because I Know That The Library Can Make A Change In A Life, Because It Made A Change In Mine.

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?

Now I Feel Life Is Really Short And I Have To Take Care Of Things.

I Lose Things. I Write Things And They Disappear From My Desk, My Life. I Move A Lot. I Wanted To Gather Them And Put Them Under One Roof, Under One Cover, So I Could Document My Life In A Series Of Snapshots.

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

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.

Like All Guests, After A Fortnight, Grief Is Best Beyond The Door.

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

The Experience Taught Me To Be Present In The Real Buddhist Sense Of Paying Attention To The Moment.

I Usually Meditate And I Call My Spirit Allies - Anyone In The Spirit World That I've Got Connections With. Even In The Spirit World You Need Connections!

I Was Interested In Cross-pollinating The Two. I Thought There Was Something Lovely In The Little Vignette Forms. I Wanted To Explore That.

True Love In Mexico Isn't Between Lovers; It's Between A Parent And A Child. Mexico Is A Very Intense Culture Of Sons Adoring Their Mothers, And This Is Why I Claim That Mexican Culture Is Matriarchal. Because The One Constant, Faithful, Inviolable, Holy Love Of Loves - The Love Of Your Life - Is Not Your Wife Or Your Lover; It's Your Mother.

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

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. [...] You're Judging Yourself, You Know, Thinking About Your Listener. You're Not Thinking About What You're Saying. And That Same Thing Happens When You Write.

Thinking About You

Judging Yourself

When Your Writing Is Unselfconscious, When It Comes From Your Heart, That's When It's Powerful.

Revenge Only Engenders Violence, Not Clarity And True Peace. I Think Liberation Must Come From Within.

If You Have Potato Chips, That Means, "who's Coming Over?"wealthy People - White People Who're Wealthy - Have A Bag Of Potato Chips That's Folded Over With A Clip. "what? There's Some Left Over?" In My House, If There Was A Bag Of Potato Chips, We'd Pour It In A Bowl And Everybody Would Just Dip In Till It Was Gone.

I Wanted To Write Something In A Voice That Was Unique To Who I Was. And I Wanted Something That Was Accessible To The Person Who Works At Dunkin Donuts Or Who Drives A Bus, Someone Who Comes Home With Their Feet Hurting Like My Father, Someone Whos Busy And Has Too Many Children, Like My Mother.

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.

I Think People Should Read Fairy Tales, Because Were Hungry For A Mythology That Will Speak To Our Fears.

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.

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.

A Second Person That's Come To My Life Very Recently, And I'm Thankful For It, Is Marshall Rosenberg, The Founder Of The Nonviolent Communication Organization. He Has All These Books About How We Can Use Our Language Nonviolently To Help Create Peace. He's Using A Lot Of Buddhism Too, But He's Helping Me To Think About Language.

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.

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.

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.

San Antonio Drives Me Crazy, But Chicago Drives Me Crazy In A Different Way.

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.

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

I Have To Get My Will In Order. I Have To Get The Macondo Foundation Going. I Want To Invest The Money And Resources That I've Gotten From Working So Hard So That It's Shared And It Has Its Life Beyond Me.

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.

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.

One Press Account Said I Was An Overnight Success. I Thought That Was The Longest Night I've Ever Spent.

That's What You Need For Your Writing - To Learn How To Be Present, Learn How To Be Calm. So Take That Nap, Do That Meditation.

The Beauty Of Literature Is You Allow Readers To See Things Through Other Peoples Eyes. All Good Books Do This.

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.

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 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.

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

Even If You're An Agnostic Or An Atheist, You Can Create An Altar, Because An Altar Is Simply Paying Homage To Someone's Life And Celebrating What They Did.

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 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.

'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

I Don't Like To Go Into Subways, Because I Always See Them [ Mice]. They Are Like My Naguales [kindred Animal Spirits]. They Follow Me. I Have Literally Stepped Off Of A Plane In Phoenix And Gotten My Bag And Stepped Out On The Curb And They'll Be A Big Desert Rat Walking Right In Front Of Me.

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 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.

The Writer Denise Chávez Comments On Poor Food And What You Associate With Luxury Food Items. In Fact, She Wrote A Whole Book Called A Taco Testimony, And Though The Title Sounds Light, It's A Heavy Book. It's About Being Working Class And What Kind Of Food Is Available To You That's Cheap.

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

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.

I Am Obsessed With Becoming A Woman Comfortable In Her Skin.

Becoming A Woman

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

My Weapon Has Always Been Language, And I've Always Used It, But It Has Changed. Instead Of Shaping The Words Like Knives Now, I Think They're Flowers, Or Bridges.

Everything That I Write Comes When It Wants To, Out Of Its Own Need And It Dictates Its Form. I Don't Say, "i Am Going To Write A Novel."

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.

I'm Most Tired After I Read, After I've Just Done A Performance, But What I Try To Do Is To Fuel And Eat A Really Healthy Meal Before I Perform. I Want To Have Enough Energy To Talk To That Last Person.

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.

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.

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.

Mexicans Don't Think Of Ghosts As Haunting You.

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.

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

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.

We Women Shouldn't Get Our Driver's Licenses Till Real Late In Life.

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.

As An Artist, I Have To Be The Ambassador Of Everything.

I Didn't Intend To Be Writing - The Writer's Life. I Was Just Writing What Came To Me At The Time, But It Is A Map Of How This Writer Had To Break Many Barriers To Find, Not A Room Of Her Own, But A House Of Her Own.

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.

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.

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.

Every Book Takes You To The Terror, That Terrible Place Of Possible Failure.

Mom Used To Walk With Me For Something Like Two Or Three Miles To Get To The Day-old Bakery. They Had Those Machines Where You Buy Doughnuts, Those Vending Machines With The Long Johns And Doughnuts. We Would Buy Those Bagels And Pastries Because That Was Our Treat. And Come Back With Shopping Bags Of These Sweets, And Who Knows What Was In It? That Was What We Could Afford That Could Feed That Many People.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Never Know What Something Is Going To Be Until It Emerges From The Womb And You See The Crown Of Its Head And Then You See It Pushing Its Way Up. So In My Life If Another Book Wants To Be Born It's Not For Me To Choose.

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."

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

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky.

Flipping A Coin

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 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.

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. And Also They Ate A Lot Of Vegetables.

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.

In The Past I Was Very Open And Very Generous, And I Found That It Just Exploded In My Face. A Lot Of People Weren't There For Me When I Needed Them. So I Have Become A Little Shell Shocked. Subsequently Almost Paranoid And Frightened Of People Now. Maybe I'm Losing Out In Meeting Some Marvelous People, But I Am Doing The Only Thing I Can To Save My Spirit.

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.

It's So Good For Your Health To Take Those Naps. I Don't Know Why People Brag That They Sleep Five Hours. I'd Be Ashamed. I'm Proud That I Sleep Nine Hours.

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.

I Don't Just Want To Talk To The Choir. I Want To Sit Down And Be Respectful Of The People Who Are Most Unlike Me, To Get Them To Hear Me And Think. It Doesn't Mean You're Going To Change Them Right There, But Just So They Can Hear You And What You're Saying.

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

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.

If You're Going To Write About The River, You've Got To Get In.

The Border Between The Dead And The Living, If You're Mexican, Doesn't Exist. The Dead Are Part Of Your Life.

I Think That You Need To Have Books That Talk About The Lives Of The Poor, And They Need To Be Involved - Involved In Acquisitions.

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.

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 You Live In Poor Neighborhoods - I Know From Living In Several Poor Neighborhoods - The Worst Supermarkets In The City Are In The Poorest Neighborhoods, Where People Don't Have Cars.

Poor Neighborhoods

I Think Of Reading As Like A Medicine Cabinet.

Trending Author

Eduardo Chillida

Category