Even the doves were in mourning. The trees seemed to sigh at her leave-taking, and the windows of each building looked, to her, like sorrowful eyes. … - Kathleen Alcalá

With our dreams, with our stories, with our tears, and with our hopes, we, too, scatter new seeds and harvest new beginnings. We gather outside-the sky above us, the earth below, and all of the ancestors watching. We gather in a place blessed by the sun, watered by the rain, and cooled by the wind. We gather in a place that has known fire, and survived. We are here to remember the future, and look forward to the time when the ancestors remember us. May they rejoice. ("The Desert Remembers My Name")

We each seek to retrace those steps that led us from where we once were, to where we are now. ("Found in Translation")

Until quite recently, any Latinex writing had to be the same story about poor people who come up north to work on farms and make good and send their first child to college. That story falls within another story about the Protestant work ethic, the American Dream. This was the story we were allowed to tell. I don’t tell stories about earned success.