I've been trying to write. I also spent a lot of time on different campuses, in conversation, helping other writers. That's what I do: I teach them writing.
I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.
I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.
I think that if you're writing about the human condition, my God, you've got to start at base: point zero, point one, is the body.
Because I can't seem to escape it. It's a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.
I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instead I wanted it to be, first and foremost, a thing that I lived.
I'm having so much trouble with writing. Maybe if I help other people, it'll be easier for me.
I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.
