I did not lose myself all at once.

But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.

There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.

I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.