It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

I've spent my entire adult life teaching at colleges of various kinds, all of them very different from Yale, and I have a fairly cynical perspective on what elite institutions - and the privileges they embody - represent in America.

Hong Kong has been the place where the memory of Tiananmen Square lives on; Hong Kong people have become more and more committed in their resistance to authoritarian government, and also, not surprisingly, committed to safeguarding their culture and heritage as something distinct and worth preserving.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.