As humans . . . we seem destined to look for patterns—which, to me, is another way of saying we’re on the hunt for “explanations.” Life is scary. We need all the help we can get to get through it. Biographical accounts, as often as not, seem to function as cautionary tales.
How might the stories of different characters tangle, or explode on contact, or narrowly miss each other, but create vibrations nonetheless?
I think so much of growing up is just looking at other people who are doing things you wish you could be doing and wondering how they got there. But then of course you have to find your own place in that. And that’s a tricky thing to do.
When we talk about colonialism it seems like it’s something from the past, but it’s not. . . . It is part of our life in a very remarkable way, very present even today.
There’s so many queer Asian women, like so many. But you don’t see much of that in literature. But I think that more and more of us are writing and publishing now. It’s a game changer and it’s just awesome.
It’s a little borscht belt schtick but also an expression of sadness so deep that it can’t even tell if it is sad any more.
I adore creating self-organized, magical-dreamy, messy-beautiful spaces of all kinds in which everyone feels empowered and “in it together,” and collaborative book projects are just one more type of those spaces.
I never wrote anything beyond a few notes on my phone while I was home . . . When it was all so close, I felt like I couldn’t see any of it properly. I found it much more generative to recall the settings from a distance, through memory.
I might be biased, but I think poetry is maybe the best place to imagine a better world. Not least of which because the tools are so cheap (pen and paper, or even just speech and dreams), making it a widely accessible form.
I believe that it’s important to acknowledge the ugly feelings. Don’t stuff them, suppress them, ignore them. I don’t like to be jealous, but I’m not going to pretend I’m not.