Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision.

As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, 'I was told by one teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure.

A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.

Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature!

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.

But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.