I write to understand. To explore and examine a lived experience, to make sense of things that are difficult to make sense of.

It’s easier in some ways to tell what my writing is not. It’s not to share the story of my life, it’s not that unique. It is not to unburden myself of its secrets. I don’t care for confessions or absolution. I care to understand things. To untangle a lived situation and reveal something that only writing can bring into being.

There are many aspects of human nature that are not well understood and I can only conduct my research through my own experience, because it is the only one that I have any chance of truthfully unpicking. So, this is one reason I write — it is personal to me. I write to create some order out of the chaos in my head. To understand why I distanced myself from my origins. As an immigrant, who no longer speaks my parents’ language well enough, and as a class defector — I think and speak using different words. This is an estrangement that is uncommon yet not fully understood.

I care for aesthetics. Finding the right words is important to me. The right words are those that capture the reality as it is, unadorned, while also containing the affect that permeates it.

But my quest is not merely personal. There are others who will identify with my particular search for meaning.

We all know books change lives.

I humbly hope my writing can contribute to such change. That it can help to undo the loneliness of experiences we all endure and often hide from ourselves. That it may enable us to reimagine ourselves, to give us a new path and a new destiny. 

And, finally, I’m a woman, hear me roar…

I write to imprint my voice — as a woman and a parvenu, in literature.