We Need Literature Because We Wouldn’t Fully

I Was Able To Not Fold And Go In A Corner Because I Had My Writing As Therapy, But Also As My Tool For Struggle.

You Have All These People In The City And Everything Has Become Centralized. If You Live Outside The City And You Need A Birth Certificate Or Some Official Paper From The Government, You Have To Travel To The City.

The Best Moment In Writing Any Book Is When You Just Can't Wait To Get Back To The Writing, When You Can't Wait To Re-enter That Fictional Place, When Your Fictional Town Feels Even More Real Than The Town Where You Actually Live.

The Whole History Between Haiti And The Dominican Republic Is Complicated. We Share The Island Of Hispaniola, And Haiti Occupied The Dominican Republic For Twenty-two Years After 1804 For Fear That The French And Spanish Would Come Back And Reinstitute Slavery. So We Have This Unique Situation Of Being Two Independent Nations On The Same Island, But With Each Community Having Its Own Grievance.

You Learned In School That You Have Pencils And Paper Only Because The Trees Gave Themselves In Unconditional Sacrifice.