Raquel Cepeda Quotes & Sayings

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness. — Raquel Cepeda

The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences. — Raquel Cepeda

Lately, Mami's eyes have been so dark, I don't like looking into them because I'm afraid I'll fall in. — Raquel Cepeda

Globalization by the way of McDonald's and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here. — Raquel Cepeda

Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature. — Raquel Cepeda

You are meant to be, despite how you got here; you'll see someday. — Raquel Cepeda

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water — Raquel Cepeda

This is what I know about my parents. They spent the next several years trying to forget each other, and me. — Raquel Cepeda

When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves ... sometimes even physically. — Raquel Cepeda

Listen kid, it's just you and me now, so let's help each other out. Always be honest with me, and show me how to be the mother and father I never had. I'll make a mess of things sometimes, and I'm sorry in advance, but I'll try. My word is bond. — Raquel Cepeda

Are Latino-Americans white? Black? Other? Illegal aliens from Mars? Or are we the very face of America? — Raquel Cepeda

I remember feeling that pieces of me were scattered around the world; I belonged to her, Mother Earth. — Raquel Cepeda

More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return. — Raquel Cepeda

Nobody, she felt, understood her
not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie
except her man. — Raquel Cepeda

Being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about. — Raquel Cepeda

In reality, Eduardo hoped the mask would make him appear vulnerable and self conscious, like a wounded animal these stupid women would fight each other over to mend. — Raquel Cepeda

Hip-hop is storytelling. — Raquel Cepeda

Women destroy me. I allow them to. — Raquel Cepeda

We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return. — Raquel Cepeda

To me, travel is more valuable than any stupid piece of bling money can buy — Raquel Cepeda

Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse. — Raquel Cepeda

Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. — Raquel Cepeda

Shakespeare had it right all along: Love will kill you in the end. — Raquel Cepeda

Traveling further ingrained my desire to connect to a place other than an island that is slightly older, in a New World way, than the United States, especially after I found characteristics of my face in the faces of the people in my global community. — Raquel Cepeda

There are things in our blood that are just naturally passed down to us, whether we want to recognize them or not. — Raquel Cepeda

While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me. — Raquel Cepeda

I think Dad wanted to feel the pain, to feel his body cry, an urgent reminder that he was still alive. I pretended not to notice. — Raquel Cepeda

This thing I am feeling, I'm almost certain, is the closest I'll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation. — Raquel Cepeda

Even the juncture in history and the zeitgeist we live in is something we choose, setting the scene for the spiritual fodder we need to grow and achieve deeper elevation of our souls. — Raquel Cepeda

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca. — Raquel Cepeda

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like. — Raquel Cepeda

Hip-hop ... has been the proverbial key that's opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet. — Raquel Cepeda

The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined. — Raquel Cepeda

The gaping hole in her heart is amplified when she catches a glimpse of the strands of silver hair framing her once young face in the mirror. — Raquel Cepeda

Alice's razor-thin blond hair is what people in Santo Domingo call bueno, but I don't understand how that kind of hair can be good. It doesn't move at all, or ripple like the water in Boca Chica when I throw shells at it. — Raquel Cepeda

If Aphrodite chills at home in Cyprus for most of the year, then Fez must be the goddess's playground — Raquel Cepeda

Paradise is a state of being, more than just the name of a suburb or a home. — Raquel Cepeda

Support and encouragement are found in the most unlikely places. — Raquel Cepeda

I wish she'd said something different, but patriarchy is as prevalent around the world as racism and xenophobia are. We can't hide from it, not even here. — Raquel Cepeda

The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca. — Raquel Cepeda

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder. — Raquel Cepeda

If it weren't for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch. — Raquel Cepeda

A mother isn't the person who births you; it's the person who rears you and shows you love. — Raquel Cepeda

We aren't encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths. — Raquel Cepeda

I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends. — Raquel Cepeda

For some, excavating the past isn't an adventure, it's more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound. — Raquel Cepeda

Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people — Raquel Cepeda

Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady. — Raquel Cepeda