Don't be afraid to say what you don't know, and speak for what you do know. Say, "I can't speak for all Latinas, but I can speak for me and tell you very, very honestly."

I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh . . ." Now my tactics are different.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.

Spanish is a poetic language, in particular the Spanish of Mexico which has a wonderful animistic attitude you might not see in the Spanish of the peninsula. I think it has to do with the indigenous way of looking at nature.

I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.