You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself. - But your yourself sucks! - It is, lamentably, all I have.

And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.

If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.

The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.