If you tell Kali Fahara-Anstein what she can and cannot do, she will prove you wrong time and time again.

When a high school teacher told her school would never be for her,

Collie dropped out, burned her GED college degree, and then an MFA. When others told her readers

didn't want short stories, her book of stories, Sabrina and Corina, became a national

book award finalist. When publishers told her they didn't understand why her Latina characters

didn't speak Spanish,

she stood firm in her desire to tell a true and unflinching story about her people.

Now that work, Woman of Light, a story that spans five generations of an indigenous Chicano family in the American West,

is a national bestseller.

Music is a national bestseller. Kali, thank you so much for being here.

Hi, Alicia.

Thank you so much for having me.

I noticed that all of your bios say you were born in Denver and you are the second

oldest of seven

children. So I feel like the fact that it has remained in your bio, even as your career has

progressed, means that you feel it says something important about you. What is that?

I want people to know exactly where I come from because I think there's a lot of confusion

that Latinos can come from Denver,

that we can be born and raised there. It's really important to my identity and my worldview that

I come from a large family of seven siblings and that I'm one of the older ones in that

that group of siblings. Growing up, I did not see a lot of representation about

Chicanos from Colorado, and I especially did not see representation of big families in the media.

...