JENNINE CAPÓ CRUCET

I was a first-generation college student as well as the first in our family to be born in America - my parents were born in Cuba - and we didn't yet know that families were supposed to leave pretty much right after they unloaded your stuff from the car.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

I remember being so homesick and realizing that where I came from was not something that existed in the cultural imagination outside the city. People used to think Miami was just partying in South Beach all the time.

People really saw themselves in a big way in Elian Gonzalez's story.

I really started considering myself a writer when I was about seven or eight years old. I wrote stories from my dreams and kept them all in a notebook that I still have.

It seems disrespectful to my parents who left... to hear their story over and over again which always ends with... 'and I'll never go back as long as anyone in the Castro family is in power.' Well, what happens if you can go back? Would you want to see things?

I have not been to Cuba, though if you count the stories my grandma told me growing up, I've been there in my head many times. I think someday I will see it, when things are different there, but I've come to feel like I really am a Miami girl.

When I left for college, my mom really latched on to the dog; She started buying him little outfits and calling him our brother, but that's as far as it got.

My husband is a huge source of support and love.

I used to work for a non-profit organization where I worked as a mentor and a counselor to first-generation college student and they kept asking me 'What can I read to try to know what I'm about to be in for,' and while I did have some good suggestions, I figured... I don't know that that book is out there, and that's sort of why I had to write it.

I was in Minnesota and Illinois when I wrote 'How to Leave Hialeah.' When I come to Miami, I'm happy. I don't need to write in Miami.

It seems disrespectful to my parents who left... to hear their story over and over again which always ends with... 'and I'll never go back as long as anyone in the Castro family is in power.' Well, what happens if you can go back? Would you want to see things?

I was a first-generation college student as well as the first in our family to be born in America - my parents were born in Cuba - and we didn't yet know that families were supposed to leave pretty much right after they unloaded your stuff from the car.

I really started considering myself a writer when I was about seven or eight years old. I wrote stories from my dreams and kept them all in a notebook that I still have.

I remember being so homesick and realizing that where I came from was not something that existed in the cultural imagination outside the city. People used to think Miami was just partying in South Beach all the time.

I used to work for a non-profit organization where I worked as a mentor and a counselor to first-generation college student and they kept asking me 'What can I read to try to know what I'm about to be in for,' and while I did have some good suggestions, I figured... I don't know that that book is out there, and that's sort of why I had to write it.

People really saw themselves in a big way in Elian Gonzalez's story.

My parents were more surprised that I wanted to go away for school than anything. They didn't really understand the benefits.

I've had lots of wonderful people help motivate me over the years to work hard and write.

While my college had done an excellent job recruiting me, I had no road map for what I was supposed to do once I made it to campus.

I have not been to Cuba, though if you count the stories my grandma told me growing up, I've been there in my head many times. I think someday I will see it, when things are different there, but I've come to feel like I really am a Miami girl.

When I left for college, my mom really latched on to the dog; She started buying him little outfits and calling him our brother, but that's as far as it got.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

My husband is a huge source of support and love.

You leave home, and then when you come back, you have a kind of perspective that you didn't have before that in some way problematizes your relationship with your family. You just start to be able to have a sort of double vision about them and who they are and how you grew up that can be really painful.