My father was an interpreter for all the Latin American pilots at the naval base. He was very well educated. My mother was a hairdresser who sang every day.

Well, by the standards of a lot of countries, by Latin American standards, it wasn't so bad.

When my mother was born on 14 April, he named her after a Latin American holiday, the Day of Americas, that nobody knew about. My due date also happened to be 14 April.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

There are so many opportunities here that don't exist in Latin American.

My father was a businessman, but my mother was an intellectual. She cared about culture, politics, and philosophy, so I became interested in the protest aspect of Latin American art.