POET | PLAYWRIGHT | TEACHING ARTIST
Resilience
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Discovering Home
Yesterday I went to a friend’s theater production downtown. It was an evening of storytelling by seven women, from seven countries. So, I thought about you. Some of these women were war refugees, some economic migrants, and some came for love.
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Book Love
There is no one left to ask who it was that read to me. But someone did. Someone must have held me close, and helped me make all those neural connections between books and comfort. Books are the one, safe place to confront your fears. A book is a therapist office. A confessional. And the…
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On Planning a Life
The question I had put to myself all those years is what do you want to be? Rather than what are you going to do? In some ways, I am grateful for that. For what spontaneity has added to my life. The unexpected is always an adventure. I think it has made me braver than…
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Continually Coming From
Standing on the edge of any conversation and then trying to casually take part—a sudden, disconcerting, change of topic: I experience the question “Where are you from?” as roadblock. A reminder. An unintended declaration of, “We know you don’t belong here.” More than that, the question makes me feel diminished:
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Of Insecurity, and the Unreliability of Memory
I remembered handing one full-length script to a director who weighed it in his hand, smiled and said, “You must have put a lot of work into this.” Clearly, he had no intention of reading it. I was never under the delusion that I was the Next Big Thing on the Great White Way, but…
