How does your journey as a writer today compare to what you imagined when you were first starting out?
“One thing that I have to always remind myself — and this is something that I want to really emphasize this semester with my students — is getting back to why we write, which is that joy, which is that sense of play. When you're playing on the page, the reader will feel it — they'll feel that energy instead of trying to just sometimes make things so technically perfect. Sometimes I see stories that are technically perfect, but they lack heart. They lack this edge.
There’s been an ongoing conversation about the lack of diversity in publishing for a while now, but especially in the last couple of years. How do you keep going despite the sometimes disheartening nature of publishing? “The United States doesn't really understand the relationship with Puerto Rico or its colonial relationship. They don't understand what diaspora is.
“I truly never considered that I could be a writer. I went to college and I had no idea what I was going to do. I was like, ‘Maybe I'll be a personal trainer, maybe I'll be a teacher.’ Then I was a nanny for two years. And then lucked into writing — or stubborn-ed my way into writing, if I can use ‘stubborn’ as a verb — because I started submitting articles to a website online. I wasn't getting paid.