I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.

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

A person doesn't mourn forever.

The anti-immigrant logic has basically saturated our world. I'm staying, and I'm fighting.

What else she doesn't know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.

Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.

I've always thought that you don't love a country by turning a blind eye to its crimes and to a problem. The way that you love a country is by seeing everything that it's done wrong, all of its mistakes, and still thinking that it's beautiful and that it's worthy.