When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.

When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.

I always think about myself as a writer; that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind of got to really playing with language in any formal way probably until I was in my mid-twenties.

[The biggest disappointment is] that he [Barack Obama] deported everybody and their grandmother.

It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion.

Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number.

Clavo saca clavo. Nothing sacas nothing, you reply. No one will ever be like her.