I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think.

In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.

It only meant that my natural inclination was to draw my "energy" from within instead of seeking it outside myself, plus my mom was an introvcert, and so were a lot of normal people. The problem was I was shy on top of that. And we all know how the world loves a shy introvert.

You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair.

I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.

From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.