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.

Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who's trying to get thin.