Who could forget the thru father of "realismo majico" (magical realism), Venezuelan historian, author, philosopher, television producer, politician, and renovator of Spanish language and literature, Arturo Uslar Pietri who's historical novels, cuentos, and essays and the voices of Tio Tigre and Tio Conejo, continue to vibrate centuries after his death. 

I hear echoes of Jorge Amado, a Brazilian master of literary syncretism and local color, who also used "magical realism" before critics even coined the term to describe Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ work.

 

I am enamored with the delicate and poetic world of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince, a story of exile as specific and concrete as graceful and elegant. Movement is the only constant when the diluvium of consonants and vocals flashflood the empty page. My literary voice celebrates the work of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master of animation, unable to resist returning from the afterlife to direct…just one more masterpiece.

 

Many thanks to Russian short story genius Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. What would life be without "The Chameleon," "Fat and Thin," and "The Lady and the Dog"? Albert Camus dramatic monologues in "The Fall" allowed me to understand the kaleidoscope of the absurd as the metaphysical tension or opposition to the glitter of human consciousness--with its ever-pressing demand for order and meaning--in an essentially indifferent universe.

 

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo's short stories, interconnected by common themes--dreams, philosophers, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology, allowed me to reinterpret the labyrinth of exile and find a mystical language to communicate the fragmented expatriate identity. 

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Isabel Allende inspired me to interview the spirits leaping from the pages at night and write what should not be forgotten. After all, I am the storyteller of my legend. As Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin would say, I write to taste life twice, in the moment and in introspection.

 

During my teens, Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz, the Hieronymite nun, "the flame that rose from the ashes of religious authoritarianism," becoming the "Phoenix of the Americas," during the Mexican Baroque period, instilled her writing, philosophy, songs, and poems in my psyche and became my Tenth Muse.

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When my friend Nikki Mathias introduced me to the novels of Jamaica Kincaid, the Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer, I learned that it was possible to write very long sentences. I abide by Kincaid's warning against interpreting autobiographical elements too literally: "Everything I say is true, and everything I say is not true. You couldn't admit any of it to a court of law. It would not be good evidence."

 

And finally, I waited for Restless Books, Riuka Galchen's "Rat Rule 79," and Meron Hadero's "A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times," since I was five.