I'm still a painter. I consider myself a painter who uses poetry as a different way of painting. It wasn't until I was in college that I started expe… - Sandra María Esteves

born/from the holy tree where one is brother/to all brothers, sister/to all sisters.

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

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.