What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

But, Christ, there's a difference between exotic and foreign, isn't there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.

We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.

Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one's individuality.