I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that's not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I'm still mostly American, but it's a nice tension.
I consider myself a writer who writes about American expatriates. And if I have any overt cause as a writer besides writing the best prose I can, it's to try to make Americans have a more visceral feeling about how America impacts everybody in the world.
Personally, it's a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.
I love being able to be a writer. That's what I moved to New York to be.
I like to think I grow as a writer from every new experience.
A writer is what I am.
I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.
I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.
The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.
I don't live my life as a writer. I'm a mother, an African-American woman, and I do everything that everybody else does - cook and a little bit of cleaning.