I remember getting to college and all of a sudden realizing that feminism was a dirty word to a lot of people and it was baffling to me. I would tell people that I was a feminist and they would look at me and go, Why? And that just made me feel more at home in those shoes.

Each musical finds its own way.

I had some great music teachers who were men, but I think there's something about having these master teachers who were women in my life. That's very meaningful to me and you see it in my work. I write a lot about matriarchs and the pain of it, the beauty of it, the burden of it, the love of it.

People ask me: Do I consider myself to be a Latino writer? What does it mean to be Latino? Those are very strange questions to answer , but feminism is easier because it's just an ideology, a way I live my life. And absolutely in the most political sense I try to sit down and write very strong female roles.