It’s 2:00 a.m. and I’m still awake. I’m so tired that I can’t stop yawning, and with each yawn, tears form—yet, sleep won’t come. The digital alarm clock teases me, its glow saying, “If you fall asleep now you’ll get four hours of sleep.” I try again and after tossing and turning for 30 minutes I […]

It was October 2009; I had quit my job and was just 10 short days away from a move to Puerto Rico, when my two best friends and I got matching tattoos. It was something we had discussed just a few weeks earlier—as adult women will do when imbibing one too many cocktails. It would […]

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ~ Anais Nin  My two years with Being Latino afforded me too many amazing opportunities to name here—proof that if you work hard, you’re rewarded in kind. Beyond […]

Originally published at Being Latino Online Magazine as Novelas for Dummies. When I was a little girl in Puerto Rico, I would climb out of bed, sneak into the living room and sit behind the recliner where my mom sat to watch her novelas. She would pretend I wasn’t there for the hour my favorite […]

Originally published as “At a Loss for Words” at Being Latino Online Magazine At the age of 7 ½  my parents decided to separate and Mami packed up my three siblings and me, and we left Puerto Rico; Chicago bound.  I had graduated first grade just a few months before and had confidently learned to […]