Novelists From The United States

"… I tend to over-research, but I don't mind. It is amazing how little we remember even about events and experiences of personal importance. The larger and deeper the well of knowledge, the easier it is for me to feel safe and secure in it, to be sure that I am as accurate and factual as possible, and to develop believable characters, who react in their own unique ways or betray what they're capable of as they deal with extraordinary situations or unusual experiences. But it isn't until I do the actual writing that I discover all of these aspects, including how much of the research is integral to the plot…"

"… In a way, the author is a writer's public persona. The writer, however, is a private person. Anyone who expresses life's experiences--their own or someone else's--in writing is a creative writer, and for him or her, the most important concern, the passion, is the writing itself…"

"I was born in a small tropical town in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. There, people fostered both the creation and the performance of poetry and music, together with the art of storytelling. I was also fortunate to be a daughter of parents who believed in educating the two girls in the family equally well as their six sons. My father used to tell my sister and me that "When you educate a man, you educate an individual. But when you educate a woman, you educate the whole family."…"

"There are times when I'm hoping the reader will feel slightly sympathetic. She's in a marriage she should never have made and she's kind of stuck in this swamp. And she is, yes, self-centered and a terrible mother; but she also is misunderstood, I think, at times, and frustrated..."

"Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless…"

"I live with them for a long time in my head. When I first start writing about a character, I don’t know them that well. It’s through the process of writing of putting them in scenes, and contemplating them—when I’ve spent more time with them—that they take on more flesh. When I start writing, I have a lot of characters that I’m not sure what their place in the novel will be…And some characters recede as I put more flesh on them. I think I don’t really need them; they’re not giving me anything. Or they’re there for a particular effect, and that’s it."

"Usually, I take great pleasure in finding a notebook that’s going to match the subject matter. And this time, for some reason, I was in a hurry. I hadn’t found the right one, I had started my research, and I couldn’t wait for the perfect notebook. So, I just grabbed one that I had. It’s the first time though, and it felt a little sad."

"I have huge respect for short stories—I just find them much harder to get right than a novel. A novel is a lot baggier and it gives you more leeway to go on for too long or to make mistakes. Whereas in a short story, every sentence, every word, matters—and that’s very hard. I think it’s easier to write too much than it is to write exactly the right thing."

"Chicanas share a topography of multiple identities, and definitions of Chicana feminism remain contested. Instead of feminism per se, Ana Castillo calls for a mestiza consciousness or Xicanisma, an uncompromising commitment to social justice rooted in a woman-centered, indigenous past. Again with her global vision, Anzaldúa's construction of "the new mestiza" encompasses all women of color. In the preface to Making Face, Making Soul, she holds out a message of hope. "We are continuing in the direction of honoring others' ways, of sharing knowledge and personal power through writing (art) and activism, of injecting into our cultures new ways, feminist ways, mestiza ways.""

"The works of Chicana lesbian writers Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherrie Moraga, Emma Pérez, Ana Castillo, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carla Trujillo, and many others bring out the pain and isolation, but, as important, their joys, self-respect, courage, and dignity."

"Ana is not only a wonderful writer, she exudes an assurance that's contagious; when I'm near her I feel, Hey! Writing about our world is important. We can help each other. She makes me feel good. Other times she reminds me of the sacredness of writing, that it's a vocation, something I usually try to hide."

"Working-class women's literature, women of color, specifically Latina women's writing like my friend Ana Castillo's, or my friend Cherrie Moraga's, Helena Viramontes's, Elena Poniatowska's, and Marguerite Duval's sends me all the way to my typewriter as much as Manuel Puig's stories."

"It is perhaps hardest for women to overcome the internalized message drummed into us that we are nothing without a man. "i wish i could have convinced you how beautiful you are," wrote Ana Castillo to her friend Alicia in her epistolary novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters. But, she despaired, "they were only the words of another woman," and "meanwhile [you felt] you bore no resemblance to the ideal of any man you encountered anywhere." These stories tell us how far we will have to travel before women are at the center of our own lives, before our thinking is changed enough to allow us to live with integrity, meaning with wholeness, with no sense of guilt, disloyalty, shame for living and being ourselves."

"Two of my role models are Ana Castillo and Denise Chavez, who draw on their backgrounds for the work they do. They are fearless. I look at them and know I have no excuse. For years I wondered who had given Castillo permission to write? I wanted to ask her in person. By the time I met her, I realized she gave herself permission."

"...[we] had abruptly appeared in Mexico as two snags in its patterns. Society could do no more than snip us out. How revolting we were, susceptible to ridiculw, abuse, disrespect. We would have hoped for respect as human beings, but the only respect granted a woman is that which a gentleman bestows upon the lady. Clearly, we were no ladies. What was our greatest transgression? We travelled alone. (The assumption here is that neither served as a legitimate companion for the other.) (p59)"

"Destiny is not a metaphysical confrontation with one's self, rather, society has knit its pattern so tight that a confrontation with it is inevitable. (p59)"

"We said nothing for several minutes. Our minds weighed like ripened fruit on the branch. When one is confronted by the mirror, the spirit trembles. (p49)"

"When i say ours was a love affair, it is an expression of nostalgia and melancholy for the depth of our empathy. (p39)"

"The early feminista understood the erroneous conceptions of the white woman's movement that equated sexism to racism because she was experiencing its compounding effects in her daily life."

"The feminista also wanted a bicultural and bilingual child care that would validate their children's culture and perhaps ward off an inferiority complex before they had a chance to start public school; traditionally, monolingual and anglocentric schools had alienated children, causing them great psychological damage."

"according to las feministas, feminism was "a very dynamic aspect of the Chicana's heritage and not at all foreign to her nature."" Contrary to ethnographic data that portrays Chicanas as submissive followers who are solely designated to preserve the culture, the feminists did not see herself or other women of her culture as such. While the feminist dialogue remained among the activists in el Movimiento, one sees in Encuentro Femenil that there indeed existed a solid initiative toward Chicana feminist thought, that is, recognition of sexism as a primary early on as the late 1960s. Clarifying the differences between the needs of the Anglo feminist and the feministas was part of the early feminista's tasks."

"After extricating our imaginations from the tight reigns of patriarchal imperialism, our next step is to bring others into the fold. Quite the contrary to our so-called assimilation as "Hispanics," I firmly believe, along with many women of conscientización in the Americas, that U.S. society must eventually acculturate our mestiza vision. Our collective memories and present analyses along these lines hold the antidote to that profound sense of alienation many experience in white dominant society."

"machismo is an exaggerated demonstration of male virility that is inherent in most cultures, but is exemplified most in the United States by their own Anglo leaders, who in the past decade maintained an olympic trillion-dollar defense budget."

"The very act of self-definition is a rejection of colonization."

"It is our task as Xicanistas, to not only reclaim our indigenismo-but also to reinsert the forsaken feminine into our consciousness."

"It has been said of me and of my writing that I am in search of identity, as indeed we all are, which is a fact of living in a world of fragmented selves. White men (and white women) have always attempted this through their writing; and because they are members of dominant society, their search was considered representative of all, therefore, universal. On the other hand, the search by those of us who come from marginalized cultures in the United States is categorized as a sociological dilemma or a schizophrenic self-perception."

"The Mexic Amerindian woman has inherited the sexism instituted by dominant Mexican and U.S. society compounded by the sexism within certain oppressed indigenous cultures. In neither the creative literature nor the ethnographic documentation, did I hear her speak for herself. Only in 1992, the quincentenary of European conquest, was the world delivered the voice of one Mesoamerican woman, the Mayan Rigoberta Menchu who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her ongoing activism on behalf of her people's human rights."

"white society insists that only European history and Greco-Roman civilization have intellectual importance and relevance to our society. The legacies of Amerindians from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego are considered primitive. The ignorance of white dominant society about our ways, struggles in society, history, and culture is not an innocent and passive ignorance, it is a systematic and determined ignorance. The omission in most literature of the history and presence of millions of residents who inhabited these lands long before European occupation forces us to read between the lines. If reading between the lines is what white feminists have had to do with the "classics," it most certainly is what we do, as educated U.S. Mexic Amerindians with all that is handed to us through literature and"

"The slave is much more aware of the master than the master ever knows the thoughts of the slave. The slave's very survival depends on knowing the master. It stands to reason that because people of color in the U.S. are forced to succumb to white dominant society's rules, are educated in Western culture, and read the literature that gives white dominant society's viewpoint we understand quite a bit about the world we live in, in addition to our own unrecognized one. Our survival depends on it."

"Early white feminists, such as Kate Millett and Germaine Greer, made arguments that resounded throughout the western world, regarding their rage against white, male-dominated society and claimed their right to be angry. "Woman" had for too long been forced into quiet complacency. In the sixties, what was the purpose of the campus bra-burning, after all, if not to demonstrate their militant refusal to be continually sexualized by male culture. And yet, when feminists of color show their indignation and express intolerance of racism, some white feminists and intellectuals accuse us of being "too angry". Should we ask first what is "anger-appropriate" so as not to offend anyone by expressing our indignation and pain?"

"Chicano/as-Mexicans are the only people besides the Native Americans who have a treaty with the United States. As with many of the treaties between Native Americans and the U.S. government, ours, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has been largely violated. This appropriation of territory came as a result of what is known on this side of the border as the Mexican-American war (1846-1848). In Mexico it is known as the North American Invasion. Again, we see that history depends on the view of the chronicler. Despite our constant presence on these lands since before the establishment of this nation, the book-market industry in the United States continues to render us invisible."

"I am a brown woman, from the Mexican side of town-torn between the Chicago obrero roots of my upbringing and my egocentric tendency toward creative expressions."

"We pray for joy and love to fill our hearts, our days and our nights"

"We pray that our government's leaders look into their souls, that they think with the heart of a mother in making the decisions that affect the world's populations."

"Today you try what suits you and when it don't- move on, move on, move on."

"You chose, as I choose to despair, or not on a given night or day. That despair turned inside out you called love."

"As if we should not be scandalized by surprise bombing over any city at night, bombs scandalizing the sanctity of night."

"No one is very certain about anything after a while."

"How does it feel to be cruel to a woman?"

"paintings and books conceal more than they ever tell."

"do you remember the Conquest of the New World? Some scholars call it the Conquest of women, because that is when women became a thing to own."

"And I write these few words into the earth before I forget that sadness isn't everything."

"Let us shout louder than her memory, louder than the unheard cries of 200,000 disappeared, buried alive in pits, thrown alive from planes, butchered and bayoneted defenseless and blindfolded in the name of democracy. It is real, the nightmare, and without end. How can we sleep? How can we sleep?"

"And life is in my hands, suckling at my breast, thrives on the rhythm of my beating heart, warmth of my throbbing belly."

"The road in either direction is neither longer nor shorter, nor more narrow nor wider than the fear that closes your heart."

"...we still are far from a racist and sexist free world. The fact that there will be Latin@s who will vote for McCain proves that despite the numbers, there is no such a thing as a Latino Movement today."

"Not all successful Latin@ writers feel they owe anything to Latin@s. But among those who do, I would hope they keep in mind the history that got them there and that they work to keep those roads open for the upcoming writers."

"In 2008 you don’t necessarily find an overt collective Latin@ consciousness (one for all, all for one) in all the output now seen by Latinos. This is a result of the ground broken by my generation. Now, a Latin@ writer, poet, rapper of Word or hip-hop, ‘chic-lit’ novelist does not necessarily feel it important to write from a collective Latin@ identity...Latin@ literature has moved along with the times. You have Latin@s in the limelight -”American Idol”, “Desperate Housewives”, in the White House, etc.- precisely because of the Latin@ Movement of the 70s. On the other hand, popular culture has become global and there aren’t just Latin@s out there now but other ethnic groups that once would not have been represented in the media and mainstream publishing."

"… In terms of Latino communities generally speaking, I don’t think women’s (and gay) sexual identities are more than simply tolerated outside the heterosexual one. But I do believe there is change taking place there, too. These are my observations and most definitely have no empirical basis. I do believe that straight men, regardless of age or background, because times are changing, are becoming more accepting of the variations of binary gender constricts."

"In traditional cultures we turn to our elders to give us the guidance of their long experience. Some young people today, I find, think that because their elders make mistakes in their youth they have no right to give advice. But that is exactly why their advice is so valuable. Our elders guide us to keep us from similar pitfalls."