I'm not saying Cubans don't deserve asylum, but if it is a national security issue, there are people who are coming from Cuba on hijacked airplanes. Why isn't that a national security issue?

It seemed from the media that we were being told that all Haitians had AIDS. At the time, I had just come from Haiti. I was twelve years old, and the building I was living in had primarily Haitians. A lot of people got fired from their jobs. At school, sometimes in gym class, we'd be separated because teachers were worried about what would happen if we bled. So there was really this intense discrimination.

We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.

It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.

There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, "Cut their heads off, burn their houses."

We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.

Art is a luxury but also a necessity.