Sandra María Esteves Quotes

I think there are many people out there who are ready and want to embrace a multicultural ideology.

There is the argument that anyone's writing is meant to be shared with the universe. I want to die knowing that my children are going to have some kind of legacy because this is all I have to give-my work.

forming bridges of correspondence from old to new worlds.

I want to learn about my past, my culture. She (her mother) talks to me in broken English, reminding me how wonderful it is to be an American; I talk to her in broken Spanish, attempting to explain why I want to know more about our history and culture.

We know the projections about Latinos becoming the largest minority within the next few years, but you can go to Barnes and Noble across the street, where they have a department store of books, or any other franchise bookstore anywhere in the States, and you won't even find one aisle devoted to Latino literature. So what are they trying to tell us-that we don't have a literature? Or that we don't read or write or buy books? None of this is true. We are a community with a vibrant and extensive literature, but we are still a marginalized culture, even now in this new millennium.

(At National Black Theater performance) I was in awe of the words I witnessed that day. It was the first time that I heard the works of writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka. I heard poetry that was about me, that was very immediate. I connected to it in a visceral way. That experience moved me so profoundly that I went home and that night I wrote my first batch of poems. It was like the floodgates opened. That reading empowered me with a voice and gave me permission to express everything that had been festering in me for years. So I just started experimenting with language and writing all kinds of things.

In boarding school, in the second grade I made the decision that I was going to be an artist because I wouldn't have to talk. I could express myself with colors, and it was safe...So I basically became a listener, an observer. My mother thought that something was wrong with me. I became an extreme introvert who wouldn't talk. You wouldn't believe that about me today because I'm very different, but back then I had a lot of fears about language. It wasn't until that art class that I opened up to words. I started experimenting and incorporating words into some of my drawings.

within these verses is history

Sometimes, within the African American community, being Latina can be a liability rather than an asset. But then, that's why it's important to know our history, to know how we are connected, how we are victims of the diaspora that divided our families and plunged us into ideas of segregation and disunity. It's so important to know our history to overcome the misconceptions about race and culture.

We are infants compared to the universe

Now you have Latino studies departments in some of the universities. And even though some of these are still highly marginalized and no more than token gestures of integration, inclusion, and diversification, where you get only one or two classes, there's still a demand for it. People want this information. This is a multicultural society. People are tired and bored with exclusivity.

I'm still angry, but I'm angry in a different way. I've released a lot of it. I'm still frustrated about a lot of things about the marginalization that happens to us. It keeps showing its face.

How I love to listen./Remind myself there is more to the world./How I have learned to grow from it.

Intelligence and feelings forming alliances for seeing.

I was raised by my mother, but around my father's family. She was alone. My father's family rejected my mother because she was too dark, and they were only a slight shade lighter. Their attitude was based on racist criteria of appearances that people had back then, when the hue of your skin defined who you were, where you were able to go, what you I could learn, do, and achieve in life.