Ybon Was The One Who Suggested Calling

My Novel, Which I Had Started With Such Hope Shortly After Publishing My First Book Of Stories, Wouldn't Budge Past The 75-page Mark. Nothing I Wrote Past Page 75 Made Any Kind Of Sense. Nothing. Which Would Have Been Fine If The First 75 Pages Hadn't Been Pretty Damn Cool.

Every Single Immigrant We Have, Undocumented Or Documented, Is A Future American. That's Just The Truth Of It.

This Country Wants To Live In The Illusion That It Is Tolerant But Also Wants To Be Able To Practice Intolerance.

Do You Remember? When The Fights Seemed To Go On And On, And Always Ended With Us In Bed, Tearing At Each Other Like Maybe That Could Change Everything. In A Couple Of Months You'd Be Seeing Somebody Else And I Would Too; She Was No Darker Than You But She Washed Her Panties In The Shower And Had Hair Like A Sea Of Little Punos And The First Time You Saw Us, You Turned Around And Boarded A Bus I Knew You Didn't Have To Take. When My Girl Said, Who Was That? I Said, Just Some Girl.

New Jersey For Me Is So Alive With History. It's Old, Dynamic, African-american, Latino.