"The act of writing is the act making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of the self, which we women of color have come to think as “other” - the dark, the feminine. Didn’t we start writing to reconcile this other within us? We knew we were different, set apart, exiled from what is considered “normal,” white-right. And as we internalized this exile, we came to see the alien within us and too often, as a result, we split apart from ourselves and each other. Forever after we have been in search of that self, that “other” and each other. And we return, in widening spirals and never to the same childhood place where it happened, first in our families, with our mother, with our fathers. The writing is a tool for piercing that mystery but it also shields us, gives a margin of distance, helps us survive. And those that don’t survive? The waste of ourselves: so much meat thrown at the feet of madness or fate or the state."