this is the role of the writer. By telling stories, we weave a narrative thread that ties our experiences together. The aftermath of September 11th h… - Kathleen Alcalá

what I'm writing about in each of these novels is the notion that these are people who look around at the society they live in or the culture they live in and say, "This isn't necessarily where I belong. I need to change my place in history and I need to change my place in this culture."

When we use the term feminism in 19th Century Mexico, it means something entirely different from what Americans think of as feminism from the 1960s or 70s. Feminists in Mexico, at that time, were fighting for state-funded education for women. They were fighting for legitimate employment for women, fair wages and working conditions. Women had actually lost legal status in the mid 1800s under the rewriting of the constitution after independence from Spain, and women did not get the vote in Mexico until the 1950s. I suppose the fight is not too different today, including the search for cheap labor by the United States, and the search for foreign capital by the government of Mexico.

Not only are each of us part of the whole, but a single act of kindness is an act of universal grace. A single act of cruelty is a falling away of a bit of the whole for which we are all striving.