“More than being Dominican, more than being an immigrant, more, even, than being of African descent, my rape defined me. I spent more energy running from it than I did living. … And always I was afraid – afraid that the rape had ‘ruined’ me; afraid that I would be ‘found out’; afraid afraid afraid. ‘Real’ Dominican men, after all, aren’t raped. And if I wasn’t a ‘real’ Dominican man I wasn’t anything. The rape excluded me from manhood, from love, from everything.”