And then. . .

As the world goes crazy, the essay I wrote for Entropy magazine swims in my head. The title, " All They See is Brown " is on repeat in my mind. And when I feel a panic bubble up through my chest from all the talks of Mexico and walls and anti-abortion marches and pipelines andandandand the title repeats. Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheyseeisbrown Alltheysee...

When one first begins to write, at least for me, I didn't have a sense of where the writing was going, who my audience was, and if there was a greater message of my culture, and I suppose more importantly where do I, Yasmin Ramirez fit into the literary landscape. I first started writing fiction. Short stories. I just wanted to write and I wanted it to be good. My first pieces fell toward a film noir surreal genre. Had a read any of surrealist? No. Were they good? I'm afraid to look. Later when working on my MFA I found I didn't know what to write about. I was finally simply supposed to write and my mind drew a blank, so I began to write what I knew. Stories I told many times over and made people laugh over the dinner table and now seemed to be working on paper and in workshops. These stories about my grandma, Ita, and being raised in El Paso became my thesis and now the book I'm attempting to finish by the end of this summer. Now, as I've published several (12 ...