Raquel Cepeda Quotes

Being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.

Shakespeare had it right all along: Love will kill you in the end.

Alice's razor-thin blond hair is what people in Santo Domingo call bueno, but I don't understand how that kind of hair can be good. It doesn't move at all, or ripple like the water in Boca Chica when I throw shells at it.

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water

Sometimes opposites attract, or so they say, but Paloma and Rocío were like arroz and mangú: they didn't really mix well.

She looks like an empty shell of a woman with her soul hovering above her. We believe in spiritual guías in Santo Domingo. Hers is her own self. I can see Mami's soul desperately trying to find its way back into her small body.

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences.

Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature.

A mother isn't the person who births you; it's the person who rears you and shows you love.

While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.

Hip-hop ... has been the proverbial key that's opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.

I wish she'd said something different, but patriarchy is as prevalent around the world as racism and xenophobia are. We can't hide from it, not even here.

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like.

In reality, Eduardo hoped the mask would make him appear vulnerable and self conscious, like a wounded animal these stupid women would fight each other over to mend.

This thing I am feeling, I'm almost certain, is the closest I'll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.

The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca.

The gaping hole in her heart is amplified when she catches a glimpse of the strands of silver hair framing her once young face in the mirror.

I think Dad wanted to feel the pain, to feel his body cry, an urgent reminder that he was still alive. I pretended not to notice.

I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.

We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return.

Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse.

Globalization by the way of McDonald's and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.

Traveling further ingrained my desire to connect to a place other than an island that is slightly older, in a New World way, than the United States, especially after I found characteristics of my face in the faces of the people in my global community.

Lately, Mami's eyes have been so dark, I don't like looking into them because I'm afraid I'll fall in.

Support and encouragement are found in the most unlikely places.

I fall in love with Paraíso. It's like a giant playground where I'm never scolded for running around recklessly, where I'm almost overwhelmed with the amount of attention and love I receive from Mami's family. In New York, I'm invisible.

For some, excavating the past isn't an adventure, it's more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.

More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return.

When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves ... sometimes even physically.

Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people