Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.

Growing up in the U.S., I was certainly deeply aware of the power of American media, specifically Hollywood and television, in terms of broadcasting a particular vision of what the American experience was like. As someone coming from a war that was a preoccupation of Americans in the 1980s, it did strike me that since we were a part of that war, we should have a chance to talk about ourselves.

Hollywood in many ways serves as the unofficial ministry of propaganda for the United States.

By college, I had a really grand, preposterous vision of myself as becoming a writer, but I don't think I had the discipline or the patience - or the ability or the humility. It took 20 years to acquire those things.

If you're a so-called minority writer, the temptation is to write for the majority... I refuse to do that.

Every new refugee to a society, whether it's the United States or some other place, is subjected to fear. They are the new outsider population, the new other.

My identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that's the first experience that I remember.