HECTOR TOBAR

In real life, there are right-wingers, there are anti-immigrant activists who want to overturn this constitutional right that we have to become Americans when we're born in this country. There's lots of people who believe that this has led to the phenomenon of the anchor babies. I am an anchor baby. My parents were able to receive their residency and citizenship because, I, a U.S. citizen child of theirs, was born in Los Angeles.

You cannot bribe a Chilean police officer - I know this firsthand.

I am someone who is fascinated with European German history, the Holocaust, and to see these parallels in our own democratic system, and then to see them come to this absolutely incredible climax, and this fruition with the election of The Donald, it was just too much.

I come from a family of working people. My parents were Guatemalan immigrants who spent most of their lives in the service industry.

Divorce was illegal in Chile up until 2005 or so.

I spent my whole life as a writer talking to just the average guy in Los Angeles and Latin America, talking to working people.

I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.

I've never been on a paperback tour before, you know, because usually you go on tour when a hardcover comes out.

The influence of cinema on all contemporary writers is undeniable. Because film is such a powerful and popular art form, we prose writers think cinematically.

I think even a hero is someone who has sort of the flaw or imperfection of character. I remember Alice Walker saying that once - she'd written a novel about a civil rights hero, and it was someone who had this flaw, this central flaw.

I've never been on a paperback tour before, you know, because usually you go on tour when a hardcover comes out.

I spent my whole life as a writer talking to just the average guy in Los Angeles and Latin America, talking to working people.

My job is to listen and to ask questions and to be respectful and win the trust of my subjects so that I can work my way into their memories and their point of view.

I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.

I come from a family of working people. My parents were Guatemalan immigrants who spent most of their lives in the service industry.

As a professional journalist, I've been interviewing people for almost thirty years. And the one thing I've learned from all those interviews is that I am always going to be surprised.

The influence of cinema on all contemporary writers is undeniable. Because film is such a powerful and popular art form, we prose writers think cinematically.

I think even a hero is someone who has sort of the flaw or imperfection of character. I remember Alice Walker saying that once - she'd written a novel about a civil rights hero, and it was someone who had this flaw, this central flaw.

Divorce was illegal in Chile up until 2005 or so.

You cannot bribe a Chilean police officer - I know this firsthand.

Undocumented people have been targeted for years now. Even under the Obama administration, there was a really large number of deportations of undocumented people. Trump has just taken that policy and ratcheted it up several notches. He's made it much more intense. We've had situations where people who would have been covered by the Obama administration, people who had been promised a path toward legal residency, had that taken away. I did not imagine that. I could never have imagined that happening.

We're writers. What do we do? We tell stories. We make up stories. We create art.

I am someone who is fascinated with European German history, the Holocaust, and to see these parallels in our own democratic system, and then to see them come to this absolutely incredible climax, and this fruition with the election of The Donald, it was just too much.

There's a lot of really wonderful things about the United States of America, especially its ethnic diversity and its mostly successful struggle to create a democracy out of many different cultures. So, we have a lot of capital as a people, we have a lot of cultural capital to keep our democracy going.

In the Latino community, the Trump campaign, even when it seemed it was a long shot he would be elected president, his campaign itself just caused lots of consternation and nervousness and anger. Famously, piñata makers started making piñatas of Donald Trump, even before he won the Republican nomination. There was this sense that, here's a person who's rising in the polls because he's insulting us, because he's created this scapegoated image of us as the people responsible for the decline of the United States.

I'm, by nature, a really optimistic person. It goes back to my parents having been each divorced three times and my finding some way to survive all that. I always managed to survive by being upbeat.

I write, fighting for every sentence, fighting to hold the reader with every paragraph.

Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world.

I just feel that art is more important than ever, that art is something that can unify us, that can make America stronger.

I want to bring Americans into some experiences they ordinarily would not consider. Experiences in Latin America, people in Latin America, I want to bring them closer to those people, and I know I have to work extra hard at my craft to reach across these increasing chasms, these gaps that exist between different kinds of Americans, and that's the work of the artist, is to create these works that sort of help us understand our time.

What we're trying to do as writers is rescue, preserve this space of thoughtfulness of language, of a deeper and more honest appreciation of our reality. And, so, we have to work even harder as writers against this tide of silliness, against this tide of superficiality, against this horrible Greek chorus on Twitter where everyone is insulting each other and now we have an insulter-in-chief, who's risen to the presidency by insulting people.

In real life, there are right-wingers, there are anti-immigrant activists who want to overturn this constitutional right that we have to become Americans when we're born in this country. There's lots of people who believe that this has led to the phenomenon of the anchor babies. I am an anchor baby. My parents were able to receive their residency and citizenship because, I, a U.S. citizen child of theirs, was born in Los Angeles.