When I was four years old, my family moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago, where I learned to read and write in English, before I had done so in Spanish. But we returned to the island and I was educated in a bilingual school in a Spanish-speaking environment where English constituted a constant presence, as it does in most Puerto Rican households one way or another. I have relatives in Chicago, New York, Hartford, and Orlando, who speak mostly English; and relatives in the island who speak only Spanish; my closest friends are of Puerto Rican, Colombian, German, Peruvian, Spanish, Jewish-American, Iranian, non-hyphenated American, and mixed cultures.

After college (I earned an Econmics degree at the University of Puerto Rico), I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where I earned a Master's degree in Latin American Studies, and later another Master's, in Latin American History. Although I am currently a doctoral student at UW, I now live in northern Spain. But before moving here, I lived for a year in Colombia; for a summer in England; for a month in Chile; and travelled extensively in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and southern Spain.