Cristina Henríquez

“I go into things thinking, it will be a short story. It’s easier. It’s not overwhelming, and I know I can do that in a few weeks or a few months. If I go in thinking novel, it feels so overwhelming. It just has to do with your natural stride as a writer. My natural stride is short story. I think in those components. It’s just me.”

“…It does seem to me that the way many people define “American” is limited, and that insofar as that’s the case, it’s usually limited to white America. But to me the very essence of America is that it’s as expansive and as inclusive as possible, and therefore the word “American” should encompass as many different kinds of people as possible, too.”

“I think to some degree, all politics is personal. It would be naïve of me to say I wrote a book just about immigrants and there's nothing political about it. As has been pointed out to me in the past, it's political to have the last name that I have. There's nothing that's not political…”