I think one of the unintended results of the embargo is that Cuba is quite consumerist – and I’m talking about the people, not the government or the official propaganda.
ACHY OBEJASI’ve gotten to try on voices very different than my own, and I’ve become much more aware of structure than ever before. Also, you really weigh every word. There’s no closer reading then when you read to translate.
More Achy Obejas Quotes
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I’m never afraid of research. I relish it!
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Interestingly, in Cuba abortion is treated as lightly as getting a mole removed.
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Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly.
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I tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.
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Fiction lies somewhere in between. I usually start intuitively but eventually I need to stop and consider structure, or research, or both.
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So much depends on our health, and we tend to take it so for granted.
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I’ve gotten to try on voices very different than my own, and I’ve become much more aware of structure than ever before. Also, you really weigh every word. There’s no closer reading then when you read to translate.
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We’re a long way from the embargo ending. Look at what just happened with the rollback of Obama’s Cuba policies. Two idiot congressmen convinced our idiot president to make it harder on Cubans on the island.
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Our real world has evolved. It’s become something much different, and inadvertently about healthcare, and about what it means to have good health, and to be able to have good health.
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It’s a neat skill to have but it’s deadly for literature. In literature, you need to stare at that hole, not ignore it. You need to figure it out.
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Each genre has its own process. I’m very intuitive about poetry. I usually write first and second drafts out by hand. The other end of the spectrum is journalism, which is much more cerebral, more thought-out and planned.
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In journalism, if there’s a hole in your story you figure out a way around it because you’ve got a 4 p.m. deadline.
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The legacy of the embargo will be Cuba’s poverty and desperation. When the island comes out of it, they’ll be even more desperate than they are now about the things they think they’ve missed.
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And then when we moved, I reconfigured my writing desk. The previous one had had very little space to write by hand. And suddenly, the poetry was gushing!
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Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature’s unpredictable creatures.
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