Books unite people and books in translation are the thresholds of other cultures, invitations to travel and to know others. - Marjorie Agosín

Writing and culture are very much related to the possibilities of the human imagination. The capacity of language allows the imagination to flow and to transform and mend the world.

Human rights were implemented by a group of Western nations in response to the moral crimes that occurred during World War II. Yet the same nations that ratified their declaration remain unable to protect their own citizens. The strength of a literature that denounces and questions, that speaks and implies that its own citizens can decide through the power of their voices and words, becomes effective in denouncing the moral vacuum in which the abuses took place.

I think food is the closest thing we have to memory—to the memory of family gatherings, the memory of your grandmother the cook, or maybe the desire for a certain food you never had. But food is really about memory: the memory of taste, the memory of when you ate the meal. I think a lot of people who left their homelands, a lot of exiles or people who were deprived of food in concentration camps, they always tie food to memory—to memory of who they were.