People want you to be the ambassador of everything. This happens to me especially when I go to Europe. I have to be the ambassador of everything. I learned this from Elena Poniatowska - intelligent woman, great lady, one of my heroes, one of my spiritual mentors, I love her. Someone is in this big museum and they ask her, "Elenita, what do you think about Mexican women . . ." And she says, "I haven't a clue!"

We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.

I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable.

I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food.

I do travel a lot, because I need oxygen, I need to go to places to meet people who aren't upset at me because I'm asking for peace.

I was raised in Chicago, so always used Latina. It's what my Father and brothers called ourselves, when we meant the entire Spanish-speaking community of Chicago.