I have always been drawn to characters like Jesusa Palancares. María Sabina, the one who performed the ceremony of the sacred mushrooms (LSD in Oaxaca), Juan Perez Jolote (the Chamula peasant from Chiapas), Demetrio Vallejo (the railroad leader), all popular heroes, even if they are not recognized. I admire them because of their wisdom and the way they impart it, with great patience, great prudence, with respect for the ignorance of the person who asks the questions.

In the case of Valley of Shadows, I sort of imagine, could the situation have been different had there been more people of color in positions of power? So it kind of turns the Western on its head by having a Mexican American sheriff be the person that's trying to solve these crimes and bring justice to his town. … And by doing that, I wanted to create a story where the people that have often been marginalized in the telling of these histories have an opportunity to reclaim their place and their role in history.

This is the story of my journey to Tucson, where I would find both happiness and sorrow. This is the story of my people, the Opata, who once numbered as many as the saguaro of the desert, and who once farmed many rancherías and had many villages, but are now just a few, and scattered far and wide from their home and the constellations that knew them. (p5)

She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America.They’re not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing.

She was somebody who was a very humble person and a very plain spoken person. She's one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America ... They're not famous, their names aren't in the newspapers. But, each and every day, they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing. And in this crowd, there are a lot of quiet heroes like that—mothers and fathers, grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives, and the satisfaction that they get is seeing that their children and maybe their grandchildren or their great-children live a better life than they did. And that's what America is about. That's what we're fighting for. And North Carolina, with just one more day, we have the opportunity to honor all of those quiet heroes all across America and all across North Carolina. We can bring change to America to make sure that their work and their sacrifice is honored. That's what we're fighting for.

I wanted to write characters that felt true and real, and there’s a lot of harrowing detail about the lives of Native people. You can just look at the health statistics and they’re pretty staggering. I wanted the characters to be working-class, because so often the characters in novels that I’ve read are white and upper-middle-class with white, upper-middle-class problems…

If I had to select one, it would be the life of the Mozambican freedom fighter, Josina Machel because I think we need to retrieve from historical obscurity lesser known historical figures who contributed to transforming society

I valued John's work on campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform. I was never part of the gang on immigration, but my votes clearly marked me as a fellow traveler. We also shared a strong respect for our Native peoples. Both Arizona and Alaska have many Tribes and large concentrations of indigenous Americans, and his decades of work to advance the cause of Native people was legendary. Because John accomplished so much during his time here--we all talk about his time spent on the international front working on defense issues, but I think oftentimes the issues with Native Americans, Indian issues, were overlooked, so let me comment on that for a moment. Back in the 1990s, John joined with Senator Inouye of Hawaii on amendments to the Indian Self-Determination Act providing for Tribal self-governance compacting. That opened up a whole new era of opportunity for Alaska Tribes. It laid the groundwork for Alaska Tribes to take over the delivery of Native healthcare from a failing Federal bureaucracy. Now, around the State, whether you are up in Utqiagvik or down in Ketchikan, they enjoy award-winning, world-class healthcare in a system that the Native people control, and that really would not have been possible without people like John McCain fighting for our Native people.

My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight.

Through that process, I was just working on the outreach team, but because of that I was meeting people who were undocumented, people whose families were impacted by it, and obviously huge advocacy organizations. That stuff stays with you. It was, of course, the basis for some of the characters and some of their stories and the lives that they live…

when we think about Mexican people, when we think about Latin American people. We don’t imagine them having full and interesting lives in the same way that we imagine white people having full and interesting lives. But they did...there’s all these nuances that get lost sometimes when you read these stories about us. And in every story that I write, I want to bring a little bit of that.

Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint L'Ouverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin.

My grandfather saw a lot of violence and a lot of poverty, and really was incredibly, deeply tortured by it. It was always this elephant in the room that we never talked about growing up. He spoke fluent Spanish, but never in front of us. I think he was really afraid that we would be judged and held back by our Mexican heritage, like he was. Part of writing this play was like digging up my own family ghosts and things that I personally had always been afraid to talk about, because my family never talked about them. Also, because I’m Mexican and I’m white, I often struggle with wondering if I’m “allowed” to tell stories through this lens; growing up, the white kids always told me I was Latina or “ethnic,” and the Chicano kids always told me I was a “gringa,” so I never really felt like I fit in anywhere…

Part of my concern in this book was to center the story on people who are often not written about in history—the farmers, the peasants, the servants who don’t have the social standing to make them newsworthy—because the stories that get remembered are so often about people who are already famous or noteworthy.