I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.

I'm learning a lot by reading teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They teach me because I feel like I have a responsibility to the communities that I speak to.

God made men by baking them in an oven, but he forgot about the first batch, and that's how Black people were born. And then he was so anxious about the next batch, he took them out of the oven too soon, so that's how White people were made. But the third batch he let cook until they were golden-golden-golden, and, honey, that's you and me.

Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you.

I didn't intend to be writing - the writer's life. I was just writing what came to me at the time, but it is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find, not a room of her own, but a house of her own.

Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.