UNCOLLECTED ESSAYS
I OWE AN APOLOGY TO AMERICA’S ENGLISH LEARNERS “May they continue breaking English, bestowing it new life with each breaking.” (Washington Post)
RECKONING WITH MY ABUELA’S COERCED STERILIZATION “Despite plentiful documentation, few people know of the United States’ prolific history of mass sterilization.” (The Nation)
COREY COULDN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE “There, in the empty dining hall, the alumnus started telling his daughter about the removal of names… how, in his undergrad years, Black students like himself had wanted the name Calhoun removed from the college.” (The Cut)
HIGH TIDE OF HEARTBREAK “I love what I do, what we do… But the institutional theatre landscape replicates many of the old structures and dynamics I abhorred in Philly, that I rebelled against by writing my Latinx family stories in the first place.” (American Theatre Magazine)
HOW A STRICT RASTAFARIAN CHILDHOOD GAVE WAY TO POETIC FREEDOM “The unclean woman. It’s an archetype Safiya Sinclair ponders when she’s 5, terrified of becoming one and perhaps already sensing the inevitability.” (New York Times Sunday Book Review)
LOSING THE SIMPLE SALVATION OF EVERYDAY FOOD RITUALS “I will fuck you up with that budget bowl of glimmering grains.” (Elle Magazine)
MEETING THE JAZZ GIANT “As early back as I remember, I was chasing the good notes.” (The Moth)
BERNARDINE EVARISTO RECALLS A LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE “Manifesto is the sturdy, exuberant memoir of a writer who, in pushing herself, also pushed an entire field.” (New York Times Sunday Book Review)
WE ARE LICKABLE LIGHTNING “My fellow Latino playwrights, we are the dreamers and the agitated nightmares.” (NoPassport)
A WORLD OF COUSINS “Tell us how things are today, thus allowing the possibility that they might be different tomorrow.” A response to Danielle Allen’s essay “Education and Equality.” (University of Chicago Press)
ON BEING 17 AND 37 Speaking to young writers about the short game and the long game of life with a pen in hand. (Girls Write Now)
MAKE SPACE “I was the fool complicit in my own duping - I had gone right along with the scam.” (American Theatre Magazine)
WHY THE BEST THEATER IS DANGEROUS “Watching this fish die would make me complicit in the extravagance of the storytelling act.” (Broadway.com)