Rodriguez:I get letters especially from older readers who are working class, and who know what that is like. That's why I take it that the energies of the book are mainly class and not ethnic.

Rodriguez: The majority of the letters I get from high school readers are from Chinese girls. I was asked once if I thought of myself as an American or Hispanic. And I said that I think of myself as neither; I think of myself as Chinese because I live in a Chinese neighborhood. And maybe I am Chinese. Maybe I'm not Hispanic at all. There are so many things about Latin American men that I don't like. I don't claim to belong to the culture, and machoism doesn't interest me at all. The things about Latin Americans that interest me have more to do with the feminine than the masculine. My best readers are not Latinos. And the reason is as simple as temperament: I may be too effeminate for them.