Sandra María Esteves Quotes

suspended from the high branches of an old wisdom tree

I feel live I'm constantly evolving into my own voice.

Discovering new meanings for old words/listed in the encyclopedia of colonialism.

I'm definitely English dominant. I've learned to think and feel in English, although on occasions Spanish comes back.

When students write, they often generalize. I want them to be specific, so I ask them to imagine that they're creating a movie, that they're using a camera, and that they have to describe each shot for the listening audience. So I stress detail to overcome the hurdle of generalizing.

Climb the stairway of your imagination

Take off the mask. Discard it.

We have only to look at the devastation reaped upon Vieques to understand why we have to demand our autonomy.

When I was young, I was placed in a boarding school where I was not allowed to speak my natural Spanish, which was all I spoke until I was five. Not being allowed to speak Spanish in school traumatized me with inhibitions about speaking.

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.

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.

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.

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

I didn't know anything about my Puerto Rican or Dominican culture until I was in my late twenties. This information was not taught or available in the schools. And it's still pretty much the case. I go into the schools today, and one of the first lessons I do with the children is to talk about the Taino Indians. You would think with all the information available today, that students would know something. But the kids are amazed when they hear me talk about this. I ask them if they know the meaning of Borinqueña or Quisqueyana. Even in Washington Heights, in a school that is predominantly Dominican, they don't know where Quisqueya comes from, even though they've heard it a thousand times. They don't know that it's a Taino word. They don't know that it was the Indian name of their island. So this information is still missing, yet still terribly important.

I disagree with the statements that all Tainos were wiped out because many fled and hid in the mountains; they mixed and married, so the Taino is still very present in our society. Recent DNA testing has proved this to be true in spite of what the history books tell us. You know, you can't always believe those accounts written in books. It depends on who is writing it and why, what is the point they are getting at to try and convince whoever may be the reader.