If you've been in a symbolic struggle long enough, even when the struggle is over, you don't know it's over.

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.

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

Of course, among the confused motives that spurred me toward being a writer was also the desire to look, to be above the trees and rooftops, beyond the Malaysian horizon that circumscribed my life.

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

My recent retirement from full-time teaching to the status of research professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) encouraged me to come out, so to speak.