I was repeatedly drawn to the fractures in my life—the gaps between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and my relationships with sex, my mother, and my motherland.
In our culture, motherhood is presumably sanctified, and I thought I’d experience social acceptance beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Instead, I felt under constant surveillance and yet utterly invisible....
The themes in the book subsequently shaped the story’s chronology and created a different style of graphic storytelling, connecting my family’s history with my community work and service.
I was attracted to those aspects of poetry where you can be in two places at once but also lost between them: rhyme, the pun, and “binary” forms like the sonnet.
I believe that's what most writers want—to share an experience that adds complexity to life and resonates with something someone hasn't been able to say yet.