This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.
Sometimes opposites attract, or so they say, but Paloma and Rocío were like arroz and mangú: they didn’t really mix well.
If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch.
Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady.
I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.
For some, excavating the past isn’t an adventure, it’s more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.
The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.
The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water.
Alice’s razor-thin blond hair is what people in Santo Domingo call bueno, but I don’t understand how that kind of hair can be good. It doesn’t move at all, or ripple like the water in Boca Chica when I throw shells at it.
I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.
I remember feeling that pieces of me were scattered around the world; I belonged to her, Mother Earth.
Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.
When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.
To me, travel is more valuable than any stupid piece of bling money can buy.
Hip-hop...has been the proverbial key that’s opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.
We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return.
She looks like an empty shell of a woman with her soul hovering above her. We believe in spiritual guías in Santo Domingo. Hers is her own self. I can see Mami’s soul desperately trying to find its way back into her small body.
Nobody, she felt, understood her--not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie--except her man.
