Interviews: VG Interviews

These interviews were conducted either by the VG staff or by students or professors at the University of Minnesota.

• Cisneros, Sandra  

  I don’t see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. I don’t believe this is truly freedom.

      » Continuing the discussion: This page has been linked to 1 time(s).

• Manushkin, Fran  

  After working a decade as a children’s book editor with Harper and Row (1968-1977), Fran Manushkin felt it was time to begin putting some of her own children’s stories down on paper.

• Mora, Pat  

  When I was reading Bachelard and feeling that pitch of pleasure that comes when a writer touches me somehow psychically, I remember thinking that the book might not at all work for Vern, that many readers would be unwilling to fly away with Bachelard and drift a bit on his ideas, but for me the flights were heady and intimate and delicious.

      » Continuing the discussion: This page has been linked to 1 time(s).

• Moraga, Cherrie  

  My major influence has been the bilingualism and working-class theater of the Chicano Teatro movements, especially El Teatro Campesino. Also the poetic sensuality of Federico García Lorca.

      » Continuing the discussion: This page has been linked to 1 time(s).

• Power, Susan  

  I'm really good this way, I have no agenda whatsoever. I don't write with an agenda where I think, "Ooh, I want to teach them this." I really write out character's stories.

• Rendon, Marcie  

  I can't honestly say that anyone has influenced my writing. I started writing to save my sanity, so from early on it was 'my' writing, my thoughts, my 'style'.

• Smith, Zadie  

  When if I see kids walking down the street, the first thing I think is, if they are slightly brown, or have slightly Asian eyes, I want to know where their parents are from, how they got here; I do that all the time.