Booked by INA

Supporting Writers of Color I recently went to the first annual Dominican writers conference in New York and one of the sessions I attended was about getting published. The biggest take away from that session for me was how the majority of editors are white women and that it's an industry driven by book sales. The speaker said that if we want to see more stories of people of color getting published then we need to buy brand new books from authors of color. Growing up I didn't have much access to books by latino authors. I didn't have the money to buy them or the exposure to even know what to buy. It wasn't until I got to high school that I was first exposed to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julia Alvarez, Helena Maria Villamontez and Rudolfo Amaya. The first novel by a latino author I ever read was Niebla by Miguel de Unamuno and this was through Spanish class. Niebla was such a beautiful and deep novel I'll never forget it. I started reading books  in Spanish sporadic...

                                                       Love Letter to New York I was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the Unites States when I was 7 years old.  In particular I moved to the Bronx, New York. At that time all of the United States was just New York to us or as we call it Nueba Yol. As a child I imagined New York to be full of huge green spaces perfectly manicured,  clean streets in perfect condition and buildings of red colors in neat rows. This is not New York. Moving to New York was a huge cultural shock. Growing up in the Dominican Republic every one in our neighborhood new each other. I would spend the mornings in school and the afternoons taking siestas while watching McGyver then playing outside with the friends. Evenings would bring their own adventures after dinner we would play games ...

Ni de Aqui ni De Alla/ I'm not from here or from there Last weekend I went to The First Annual Dominican Writer's Conference in City College, New York. I was really excited to go for two main reasons. The first one is that we need more Dominican writers. The two most recognizable Dominican writers are Julia Alvarez and Junot Diaz. While their novels are amazing and really touch on different aspects of what being Dominican is; compared to the number of white writers, two is barely scratching the surface. I also think that there's so much about the Dominican experience that is not being told as well. As we evolve and change so do our experiences and those are stories that need to be told.  Granted while I was at the conference I discovered many more Dominican writers  like Angie Cruz,  Nelly Rosario, and Josefina Baez among many others. I am looking forward to reading these new books. My goal is to create almost like a syllabus that encompasses not only non fiction books...