I think of myself as Latina. I am Puerto Rican. I think of myself as Puerto Rican. But I’m also here in the States, I am Latina. And I’ll tell you why. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. My parents are from Argentina. My grandmother was from Uruguay. My father-in-law is from Cuba.
So, you know, in my home I spoke Argentinean with my parents. I went out of my house and spoke in Puerto Rican with my
with my friends. And my mother and I used to have these fights about me talking in Puerto Rican because she thought I should be talking in Argentinean.
And Spanish is Spanish. The Spanish language is Spanish language, but there are different words here and there. There are ways of saying things in each country. That’s the beauty of Spanish across
all across Latin America.
So what influence has that had in the way that I view books and the books that I do? I think it has had a lot of influence because what I think I tend to do is to think about what makes us the same rather than what makes us different. I really relish in finding, you know, the songs or the rhymes or the beautiful folklore, that we all can share, that a number of different Latinos can share and share with their children if they are growing up here in America, learning to love, hopefully, two languages and two cultures.
So, you know, it’s the same. I love to see the Spanish language written in the books of, you know, in the pages of the books that I write. I think it’s important. So I
there are certain elements in the folklore, in the traditions, in the heritage that we have in common. And I relish in celebrating the commonality rather than what makes us different.