The first hit on the nervous system is the one I'm most interested in, because I think if you hit the reader emotionally, the reader can't guarantee the lessons they would like to learn.

My grandfather is Portuguese. He betrayed what was expected of him and married my grandmother of African descent on my father's side.

Eliot said that "genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." What he meant by that is, the emotional understanding comes before you understand the argument that follows later in the text.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

I want a theory to come out to guide policy.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

If you die without agency as a child, but you have agency in your body [in the novel], how is it to be enacted unless it is being reimagined by a writer?