Ortiz Cofer believes that what it is important in life is not the event but the memory that these events produce. It was these memories that we as humans cling onto and our mind warp into how we would like to perceive these events. Ortiz Cofer tested her theory by asking both her mother and her brother to recall the same event. When both of them gave a different account of the same event, she came to the realization that a person's memory of an event is based on many other factors, such as gender, race and even emotional situation. This phenomenon became the basis of her writing. Ortiz Cofer had written many different things within her time, such as personal essays, poems, and even novels. In each of her works, she stresses the fact that this is her own rendition of the truth and that everyone remembers an event differently. In her own words, she says, “If anyone objected I assured them that it wasn't my intent to defame them or warp the truth, but to give my rendition of it. My intent was poetic rather than genealogical.”