Alice Walker, "In Search of My Mother's Gardens": I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible--except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty. … And perhaps in Africa over two hundred years ago, there was just such a mother; perhaps she painted vivid and daring decorations and yellows and greens on the walls of her hut; … perhaps she wove the most stunning mats or told the most ingenious stories of all the village storytellers.

Judith Ortiz Cofer, "An Interview": Wasn't it Milosz who said that "language is the only homeland"? I believe that. The women spoke in Spanish of course, and I have to translate that into English. Something is lost. ... The only way I can regain the power of the original storytelling is not to be a slave to the factual story, but rather to present it as drama, with me as the witness or audience. I try to give back to the women's voices the original power they had for me as a child by using the techniques of the poet and fiction writer.