When I write, I put aside the heterosexual world to admit a muse that is a woman-loving-woman female.

Poetry has roots, and sometimes they are aerial. Sometimes they are buried.

When I was younger, yes, there was a part of me - and I wrote about that bit in Among the White Moon Faces - that wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be accepted by my brothers and to be their peers.

The Chinese traditionally have revered age and longevity - I have one and hope for the other! - so, in Taipei, a city-hub for global Chinese who dis-identify with the People's Republic of China's construction of a Communist nationalist Chineseness, I called on the Chinese muse of writing to witness my emergence out of the academic woods.

After Fifty Shades of Grey, I think my writing is pretty tame, isn't it?

I guess my writing through time has focused on a number of dimensions that reflect separately on the meaning and social place of the female body.

I think that's what, to me, also talks about the silences in my work - as a woman, a woman writer, when you say, "no" or you have to say, "no" so often to the writing occasion, those occasions don't really come back.