I Never Wanted To Be Away From

For Me It's A Remarkable Thing That There Is A Prize Celebrating And Honouring And Making For A Brief Moment Short Fiction The Centre Of The Literary Universe.

As A Dominican Man, You're Socialized To Be A Playboy. You Spend A Lot Of Time Being Taught That Women Are Important, But Without The Really Positive Framework Of Why. You Figure Out Quickly It's Because Of Culo (ass). But There Is A Sense That It's Not That Simple.

I Came Up Under [ronald] Reagan And Under [george] Bush, And What Are We To Do Now? We Are Here To Fight. People Can Run Off All They Want. But For Me, [donald] Trump Is Already In The Dominican Republic.

My Mother Took Care Of Us Until My Father Scrammed, And Then She Ended Up Working In The Small-factory Sector Of New Jersey With A Lot Of Other Immigrants.

I Think Men Spend So Much Time Passing For Being Men. There's A Sense Among Many Writers Of Color That The Most Invisible Figure That Was Sitting Between All Of Us Was The Nerd. But It Was The Thing We Weren't Saying, That People Were Afraid To Say, Like, "yo, What We Do Is Nerdy By Definition."