I’m in exile from the mother tongue—in exile from the foreign tongue—in 
exile from all the tongues that wag with the familiarity of knowing—with the 
credibility and the certainty—and without any kind of doubt that this is their 
town and country. I laugh out loud—and my laughter is as mother tongue 
as any laughter in any foreign tongue—but the joke is on me—because my 
laughter is not cheering for the other team which is roasting the barbaric 
tongue over an open flame of racist jokes and innuendoes—which is what 
the mother of all eggs laid in the foreign tongue wants—to leave me 
speechless—without a motherland—a land to mother my thoughts or a bed 
to lie down in.
Giannina Braschi, 2001