How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.

Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. That's half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language.

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

The station that's up there is like a house with no furniture. It's ready to be lived in, but it doesn't have the things you need day-to-day.

When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.