Background Image

...

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.

-Sandra Cisneros

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

You Meditate And Then

Sandra Cisneros

...

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.

Views: 51087

Topic

More From Sandra Cisneros

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Just Feel That The East And The West Are Two Different Worlds. I Sometimes Get Saddened When I See That Very Few Writers Of Color Are Published Or Reviewed In East Coast Presses And Magazines.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

Afterwards, People Come And Say, "i Felt Like You Said That Just To Me. What You Said Is Something I'm Going Through Right Now," So You Know That Spiritual Connection Is Going On.

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.

When I Say What I'm Reading, This Is What I Need. I Know The Ills That Plague Me.

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 Usually Say Latina, Mexican-american Or American Mexican, And In Certain Contexts, Chicana, Depending On Whether My Audience Understands The Term Or Not.

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.

I Don't Think I'll Write A Large Novel Again Because It Was Like Being In Jail For Me. Even Though That's The Funniest Book I've Ever Written, It Was The Saddest Period Of My Life.

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 Can't Do A Linear Novel. I'm Just Going To Write What I Need To Write.

Mexico Is Only A Memory Of Childhood Safety.

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.

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

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

That's Why It's Important To Be Multilingual, Because It Teaches You So Much About Your Own Language.

Every Single House Has Had Death Visit.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Catholicism Believes In The Virgen De Guadalupe. The Mother Of God Is Worshipped, Especially In Latin America. I Find Her Very Empowering. I Find That The Virgen De Guadalupe Allowed Me To Return To Parts Of My Upbringing I Had Disregarded.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Idea Of A Meal, If I Was Hungry, Was To Open A Bag Of Potato Chips.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Everything That Is Most Mine Belongs To Everyone Now.

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!

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.

How Can Art Make A Difference In The World?

Making A Difference

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.

When You Have A Flourishing Of The Economy You Have A Flourishing Of The Arts.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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 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.

But I Deal With This By Meditating And By Understanding I've Been Put On The Planet To Serve Humanity. I Have To Remind Myself To Live Simply And Not Overindulge, Which Is A Constant Battle In A Material World.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

'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 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."

[dennis Mathis] Was Very Sensitive About Keeping The Unique Way That I Spoke English - It Had A Lot Of Mexicanisms Or Mexican Syntax. So You Keep It In Because It's Adding Something Unique.

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

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.

[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 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.

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?

Being On A Highway, All That Speed And Aggression, Is Very Terrifying To Me.

I Feel Comfortable In Spanish, I Chat Like A Parrot, But I Don't Have The Confidence In Spanish That I Do In English.

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.

As People Who Are Women, Who Are Indigenous And Live On Indigenous Lands, We Know, And This Is Something I Understand The Older I Get, That They Don't Visit The Same Way The Postman May Visit But They Do Visit. They Visit In Ways That Our Modern Society Often Disregards And Considers Immaterial Or Unreal.

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.

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

I Think Of Reading As Like A Medicine Cabinet.

Before You Speak, Get Very Quiet, Do The Meditation, Say, "use Me As A Channel For What Needs To Get Said To This Community. This Community Needs To Hear Something Very Important That I'm The Only Person In The Room Who Can Say It. Please Help Open Me So That I'm Not Frightened And Speak Through Me. Let Me Be That Channel So That I Can Help Heal." You Make Yourself So Humble That You Really Are Like A Flute And That Music That Comes Out Comes From El Corazón. All The People You're Connected To From That Light That We Call Love.

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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 . . ."

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.

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

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 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.

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!"

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.

Mexicans Don't Think Of Ghosts As Haunting You.

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.

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

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.

Maybe All Pain In The World Requires Poetry.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Ego's Blocking The Light From Coming.

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.

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

My Book Would Come Out In One Language, Then It Would Come Out In Another Language, Then It Would Come Out In One City, One Read, And I Was Always Being Called Away From My Desk.

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.

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.

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

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

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky.

Flipping A Coin

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

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

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.

"you're Next, After The Feather Dancers." And You Had To Get Their Attention, Because Otherwise People Would Go, "oh, A Poet." You Really Have To Learn.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Had To Learn Quick, Because I Was Performing In Cinco De Mayo Festivals With Babies Crying And People Lifting Their Beers, And You Know The Feather Dancers Would Come, And They'd Say, "what Are You, A Poet? You're Next".

We Changed It To Emocionó, The Way You Say In Spanish, "to Emotion Me" [to Be Moved]. That, As Opposed To "haunt." We Wanted The Feeling Of Sadness And Grief And Obsession, So We Used Emocionó.

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.

I'm Not Afraid To Say What I'm Afraid Of. Does That Make Me Fearless?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

My Virgen De Guadalupe Is Not The Mother Of God. She Is God. She Is A Face For A God Without A Face, An Indigena For A God Without Ethnicity, A Female Deity For A God Who Is Genderless, But I Also Understand That For Her To Approach Me, For Me To Finally Open The Door And Accept Her, She Had To Be A Woman Like Me.

Bricks Are Crumbling In Places, And The Front Door Is So Swollen You Have To Push Hard To Get In

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.

For Example, There's No Word Emocionó In English, So I Have To Say, "you, You Really Emotioned Me," It's More Precise, Even Though It Sounds Odd. "my Father Emotioned Me." Or "that Performance Really Emotioned To Me."

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.

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

I Think People Are Much More Concerned About Money Now. There Aren't The Big Advances Of The Past. You Feel The Sense Of Nervousness About The Book Industry. It's Not Like Before. Not That I Knew Very Much About What It Was Like Because I Was A Newcomer To It, But I Get That Feeling That People Are More Conservative In Their Book Choices And What They Are Going To Publish And What's A Sure Sell. As Opposed To - Just Like In The Economy - A Sense Of Luxury And Sense Of Risk Taking Ten Years Ago.

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.

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.

I Have This Great Fear Of Mexico City. I Won't Go To Mexico City Unless Someone Meets Me At The Airport And Is With Me. I Just Feel Very Vulnerable There.

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.

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Gabriela Sabatini

Category