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.

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.

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

Are Latino-Americans white? Black? Other? Illegal aliens from Mars? Or are we the very face of America?

The tension between people is palpable, and the ideal of what it means to be and look American becomes a preoccupation to folks around the country, including me.

I remember feeling that pieces of me were scattered around the world; I belonged to her, Mother Earth.

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

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.

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