Por Dahlma Llanos. They credit me with persistence. It is not persistence but mandate. In the early light, when the mists of night begin to dissipate, I look at the blank page and think of them. I cannot bear the silences, erasures, and denials.

Por Dahlma Llanos Figueroa. I write first and foremost because the stories I grew up reading in school, those I watched on television and in the movies, bore no resemblance to the world of my family or my community. Those stories did not tell about the lines in my grandmother’s face or the smell on my abuelo’s skin when he came home from the cane fields. Nowhere did I see my family’s many shades of brown or the sound of my mother’s voice when she called me mamita.