Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

Becoming a woman is an act partly of nature and partly of self-invention.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.