Short Story Writers From The United States

"I made a commitment a half century ago to make my writing my own tool and weapon to fight injustices as I recognized them, and this continues. I am grateful to the gods for it."

"A novel begins with a query."

"We can’t assume who speaks what language in these times."

"(In one of your essays in the book, from 2012, you write about Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez and say they are "[d]oing no more than supporting and promoting patriarchal and capitalist goals." Do you still feel this way about them, even as they—Beyoncé especially—are often held up as feminist icons?) AC: I do, but I know that I would have a lot of women of color of younger generations argue with me about that. I come from a generation of radical feminism; we believed in not using your body for financial gain and that sexualization fed into violence against women. I know that dates me. The performances that both Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé give are highly sexually charged, and they've made a lot of money off of a lot of men by sexualizing themselves as exotic beauties. Both of them have dyed their hair blonde, straightened it, weaved it, which feeds into a fantasy about women and women of color. I come from a very different perspective, and I don't believe that anything in terms of personal gain or materialism is really helping the rest of the world. If you make that much money, instead of buying a humongous mansion, go back to your community and start community projects and talk to your legislators about changing some of the laws [that mean] young men of color who have felonies because [they dealt] drugs as teenagers can no longer integrate into society. Moving away from Beyoncé and J-Lo—I'm sure they do a lot of good deeds—I'm very lucky I have a roof over my head. I can eat healthy food, my children have coats in cold weather, they have an education. I don't think a human being needs much more beyond that."

"Anyone who says the artists and writers they study don’t influence them, directly or unconsciously, isn’t being honest."

"It is the nature of all living creatures, including Homo sapiens, I believe, to adapt to a place where they may survive. If that is something we as social beings called home then home it is for my main character in The Guardians, Regina who has plunked down hard earned pennies on a cachito of terreno where she can survive, plants some vegetables to live from, etc."

"We think that language is only an aesthetic choice or a matter of personal expression, but for Mexicans and the people in the U.S. who share that history, suppression of our culture is political. This is the reason I choose the language/s I choose, and when."

"“Black Dove” [“Paloma Negra”] is a mariachi song, and we Mexicans love our mariachis; we'd go celebrate Mother's Day or a birthday or something and ask for a song that brings a great deal of sentimental feeling to us individually or the table. That's how I feel with "Black Dove." In the book I explain that it's a song that my mother actually sang as I left home as a young woman. My mother was very traditional, and in her mind, the way a girl leaves home is through marriage—me going out with my little satchel was not how they imagined it. They imagined the worst, that I was going to end up in a cabaret as one of those that dances for a few fellas."

"I'm fairly certain that if you study any poet of any given time, any sex, any class background, the question of searching for identity is there. It's inherent. It is a process of self-understanding, of going through life. Take Pablo Neruda, ambassador for his country, writing poetry reflecting the issues of his life. What I'm saying is that the difference between me and Neruda is that I'm not a man from a middle-class elitist background. My government is not sending me as ambassador so I can go and write poetry in some other place. What is different with women of color is that they are the very last permitted a voice. What we are hearing now is this very unique, silenced, previously censored voice."

"The issue of mass incarceration, the multi-billion-dollar industry that prisons have become in this country, is important to talk about. The fact is that young people of color are being harassed as much as my generation was 30 years ago despite the civil rights movement and all the other ways that we've brought up race issues in this country."

"I take every risk in writing that I can, because I don't write just to entertain people or make money."

"I have a commitment to many of my major characters who have brown skin. That's a commitment to the story of a different character that you're not used to seeing in literature. In Julio Cortázar's work, for example, I can deal with his Latin American history, I can deal with the language, but his women have white, porcelain skin. They're Argentine, probably from a European background."

"…I always tell people that you have to write what's tearing at your heart, what you need to resolve. I thought it was time to walk my talk. How was I going to write about parts of my life and not write about what really was motivating some of my behavior? I've written long enough to know where the boundaries are."

"I see the ‘breast fest’ going on around the world where we see every female’s cleavage, ‘girls’ gone wild’ commercials, not to mention Spring Breaks in the States, their wet t-shirt contests and so forth. I think, this is what we feminists struggled so hard for?"

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

"As disturbing as some of us may find it there seems to be some evidence that the age men are most attracted to is a young teen, 13 to be specific. Women especially are subjected to ageism. Once she is past her twenties, I think a lot of women, let’s say in contemporary Western culture, still fear losing their sexual appeal, i.e., their worth as women…"

"Why is what is natural to women often seen as negative?"

"We all participate in patriarchal patterns."

"In Lak Ech/tu eres mi otro yo–teaches about the ‘other’ and that we are all each other’s reflection."

"Protect him, yes, with my life; spare him of learning responsibility and to take care of himself, no."

"A good lover will do that, see something worthwhile in you that you never knew was there. And when there's something you don't like to see in yourself a good lover won't see it either."

"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."

"I don't want anybody attached to me forever with gratitude. (p85)"

"You say your city the way some Americans say this is their country. You never feel right saying that - my country. For some reason looking Mexican means you can't be American."

"Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that float from foreign ships. They let scores of invisible imps loose out of found bottles. In a scoop of salt water, they revive the dead blobs that have been beached in storms and tides: fins, whiskers, and gills unfold; mouths, eyes, and colors bloom and spread. Sometimes ocean people are given to understand the newness and oldness of the world; then all morning they try to keep that boundless joy like a little sun inside their chests. The ocean also makes its people know immensity. (p90)"

"I feel that everyone has a blurred area, which is a border between their imagination and what actually happens, and I am very interested in that border."

"The power of imagination leads us to what's real... it's a bridge toward reality. (1986)"

"I am creating part of American literature, and I was very aware of doing that, of adding to American literature. The critics haven't recognized my work enough as another tradition of American literature. (1986)"

"For fiction, we fantasize about what we would like to happen: I am making what I would like to happen happen. And so, this writing always feels new and going forward. If there is such a thing as reverse memory, maybe that's what I am getting into; because it seems to me, I'm writing the memory of the future rather than a memory of the past. (1986)"

"(about visiting China for the first time) MHK: I did feel that I was going back to a place that I had never been. (1986)"

"(Your books are a lot about people's inhumanity to one another, so I wondered where you find comfort and balance?) MHK: I ask that of myself a lot: where are the sources of life so that you can renew yourself! I find help in nature. We should always remember to plop ourselves under the trees because every time I've ever done that I feel the earth giving me energy and the sky giving me perspective, and I come as close as I ever do to satori. Then I realize that life in the city cuts me up into pieces. I know that, and yet I don't leave it. All I have to do is go out into nature and it gives me strength to come back and work on. And I read-there are writers who give you life whether or not they write well, it's very odd. I feel that way about Anaïs Nin, who sometimes I don't think writes well. I re-read Orlando whenever I feel stuck, and I read poetry. (1986)"

"(What do you think about revenge?) MHK: I come from a culture where revenge is important. So many of the stories and operas I grew up on have that theme of revenge. I think has something to do with justice in our lifetime rather than justice in another reincarnation. But in American culture revenge is really questioned. Christianity says no revenge. The vengeance I will permit myself has to come in a new form. I wrote in The Woman Warrior that the Chinese idiom for "revenge" can also mean "reporting to five families." If you can find the words for an injustice and put it in some artistic shape, and let everyone know, then revenge has taken place. It has something to do with broadcasting the reputation of one that you want revenge against. Revenge cannot take the form of an eye for an eye, not like that. (1986)"

"Asian American writers like Maxine Hong Kingston are aware of that too: that you can think in another language and borrow from its sensibility, from its syntax and idiomatic phrasing to add something new to the English language"

"I've heard that before, from writers who say that I get them going again. It makes me feel that in my life I am at the source of life and words. I feel that I'm sort of standing over this hole in the universe, and it's all pouring in. I can be a conduit. The people who read my work feel more alive, and they can work. I feel like that about other writers that make me keep going. When I read Virginia Woolf's Orlando or William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain, I can feel like I'm dying, or I'm stuck, both in life and in work. I read those books, and then I start flowing again. I'm happy that I can do that for other people. (1989)"

"When you are a person who comes from a multicultural background it just means that you have more information coming in from the universe. And it's your task to figure out how it all integrates, figure out its order and its beauty. It's a harder, longer struggle. (1989)"

"There is a refusal to understand that an American can look like one of us and doesn't have to be white. (1989)"

"I feel that I break through pigeonholes of what's fiction and what's nonfiction, of what an autobiography is. (1990)"

"It's always important to tell the truth because if you don't, there are all kinds of terrible social and psychological consequences. There are implosions and crazinesses that take place when you keep important energies and forces locked up inside of yourself. I think that some of our truths are things that are not dealt with in standard autobiography. I think that dreams are very important to women-and important to everybody's psyche-and to have access to those dreams is a great power. Also visions that we have about what we might do, also prayers-that's another "silent, secret" kind of thing. I think part of what we have to do is figure out a new kind of autobiography that can tell the truth about dreams and visions and prayers. I find that absolutely necessary for our mental and political health. I think the standard autobiography is about exterior things, like when you were born and what you participate in-big historical events that you publicly participate in-and those kinds of autobiographies ignore the rich, personal inner life. I feel that it's a mission for me to invent a new autobiographical form that truly tells the inner life of women, and I do think it's especially important for minority people, because we're always on the brink of disappearing. (1990)"

"One of the first things I ever noticed and loved about reading is that words can get through all kinds of barriers; they can get through skin color and culture. It's so easy to read and go through all kinds of struggles with an author. I love the way, when we read, we actually take on the mind of the person that we're reading. (1990)"

"I was really shocked when I came out with my first book. At that time there were some Asian American men who were all we had of our literary community. And I expected, when my book came out, for them to say, welcome. Welcome to the community of artists. Because there are so few of us. So here's another one to add strength to our numbers. And, instead, the men just right away went into this big thing. It's a very crazy plot they have in their heads. Their assessment of the publishing industry is so wrong. (1989)"

"I've heard people say, "Why don't you write about rich, successful Chinese American people? Why don't you write real role models?" I think I do write about the great emotional, psychological struggles. I'm not that interested in writing Horatio Alger stories. I think of myself as somebody who's been given a gift of an amazing literary voice, and so I want to be the voice of the voiceless. I'm not that interested in being the voice of a wealthy, corporate Chinese American executive. (1990)"

"I think that feminist writers have been writing with power and pride, but I am suggesting that we have to invent new images and ways of power. So far the world thinks of power as violence, that power comes from a gun. We must create a new kind of drama in which there is drama, but it's nonviolent. And this has barely been thought of. (1990)"

"I hope when artists write new characters, we invent new archetypes and they are visions of ways that we can be...What we need to do is to be able to imagine the possibility of a playful, peaceful, nurturing, mothering man, and we need to imagine the possibilities of a powerful, nonviolent woman and the possibilities of harmonious communities and if we can just imagine them, that would be the first step toward building them and becoming them. (1990)"

"what I want is to give people questions (which I think are very creative things) and then when people wrestle with them and struggle with them in their own minds and in their own lives, all kinds of exciting things happen to them. I don't want people to throw the responsibility back to me. (1990)"

"a lot of Chinese Americans get mad, because they say my experience is nothing like theirs. Of course, they may come from a different class of people; they come from a different generation of migration; they're a different generation American. There aren't enough books out there. If there were lots of books, then you could see the variety of people in the books, reflecting the variety of people in life. But since there aren't a whole lot of books... (1989)"

"There's a redemption that takes place in art (1990)"

"sometimes I think writing has nothing to do with me and that I shouldn't take credit for it. I feel that something comes from outside through me onto the typewritten paper. Often, I sit at the typewriter and compose stuff I didn't even know I knew. It happens all the time. It's not like I've decided what I'm going to write. (1977)"

"I love Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior-what a wonderful book that was for me. That gave me permission to keep going with what I'd started with House on Mango Street."

"While I love young people, I like to talk to people my own age. I feel very lucky when we get together and there are middle-aged people and they still have their art, their writing, their acting. That's exciting. Like there is still life and the business of time and taking that away from them has not stopped them from being youthful."

"I am looking for a language of peace. I am trying to rewrite a book of peace. And so maybe that is fighting for the soul, not just of Chinese American people, but the human soul. I want the human soul to be one where people care for one another and where people cherish and nourish and value one another, and I am trying to think of ways of conflict resolution that have to do with talking or hugging or something, whereas his idea of conflict resolution is to kill each other. (1991)"