Thank you so much.
Wow, this is exciting.
I can't wait to get a better look at those costumes.
Thank you all for coming.
And thank those of you who went to the extra trouble
to dazzle us with some history brought to life.
I'm so excited.
Bienvenidos, welcome, and thank you to the Poetry Center
for inviting me.
I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity
to speak to you about my books.
I loved reading since I was a very small child and still do.
I think of reading as an adventure.
And writing, I promise you--
because I hope that you'll all be writers, too,
in whatever way you choose to do it,
whether it's just for yourself or in school--
writing is also an exploration.
It's an adventure.
Words can take us traveling to any part of the world,
any time in history.
We can enter the minds and emotions of real people,
or imaginary characters, animals,
or even mythical creatures.
We could enter the mind of a tree.
And we could write poems in the voice of a tree.
Since my mother is Cuban and my father is from California,
I tend to write about the two places
I know best and love most.
So as a bicultural, bilingual child,
I didn't think of myself as having wings.
Travel between Cuba and the US was simply
a natural aspect of life.
When I was a child, my family flew back and forth
between countries, cultures, and languages.
But I have to admit that I wasn't always sure whether I
belonged to either.
In some ways I always felt like an outsider.
Now, as an adult, I think of my two cultures as wings.
I think of myself as a complete person with two origins.
I think of that hyphen, in when Cuban-American-- if you
say Cuban hyphen American, or Mexican hyphen American,
or Asian hyphen American, you can see that as a separation
or you can see it as a bridge.
And I see it as a bridge, a way of belonging to both cultures.
And in my writing, I love to fly back and forth.