I think the possibilities are endless in terms of what the genre would be like. However, in terms of looking for sources of money, I think we have to be very careful not to fall into Hollywood's commodification of Chicano culture. We could look at the example of Piri Thomas, a successful Puerto Rican writer now living in the Bay Area, who has received repeated offers from Hollywood...and he said he's not going to write about his people doing drugs and going to jail.

People like to think of themselves as purists, but there is no such thing as purity, when there exists so much contact.

I feel that it's very important for young people to have a sense of history and do research and don't re-invent the wheel and don't think that you're the first martyr to discover social injustice but to take advantage of previous generations of activists and find out what they did and how they resolved things.

A good lover will do that, see something worthwhile in you that you never knew was there. And when there's something you don't like to see in yourself a good lover won't see it either.

Our goal should be to achieve joy

You know you have that zealousness of the young person that feels like you can go out and do it all. You know you save the world, save your gente, save women and before you know it if you try to do that you will burn out very quickly. My feeling is that I always think that and my advice to young people regardless of what times in these decades we've been living in there's always work to be done. The point is what can you do personally that you can live with so that you can get up the next morning and have the strength to start it all over again.

I had serious reservations about putting my son in the public schools in my area. I have a tremendous amount of fear for the future of my boy. He's nine-and- a-half and dark-skinned. By the time he's 12 or 13, who knows who he's going to be identifying with in these days when you get shot down for wearing expensive Nikes to school...I've heard that if a Latino makes it to 19 years of age, he has a good chance of surviving into adulthood. Up until then, you don't know.