I just find something to learn in everything.
People ask me: "Do I consider myself to be a Latino writer?" "What does it mean to be Latino?" Those are very strange questions to answer , but feminism is easier because it's just an ideology, a way I live my life. And absolutely in the most political sense I try to sit down and write very strong female roles.
I remember getting to college and all of a sudden realizing that feminism was a dirty word to a lot of people and it was baffling to me. I would tell people that I was a feminist and they would look at me and go, "Why?" And that just made me feel more at home in those shoes.
I had some great music teachers who were men, but I think there's something about having these master teachers who were women in my life. That's very meaningful to me and you see it in my work. I write a lot about matriarchs and the pain of it, the beauty of it, the burden of it, the love of it.
If any of my plays outlive me or get on library book shelves and somehow stay read, all of a sudden it's a testament to "that's part of our culture, that's part of our history."
I think all of the decisions I make about my life and writing are the preparation - what I choose to write about and the immersive nature of the lifestyle I choose for playwriting.
Novels can fill in the spaces about what that emotional resonance is.
Each musical finds its own way.
