Women Lose Their Lives Not

I Fell Into Shame Like A Suicide Throws Herself Into A River. (253)

I Was Born In 1949, And By The Time I Was 10, I Figured Out That My Hope Chest Was Not Aimed In The Same Direction Everybody Else's Was. And That Life Was Going To Be Very, Very Complicated. And That I Could Either Be Provocative And Declamatory, Or Shy, Retiring And Scared.

I'll Tell You The Secret. When You Begin With A Character, You Want To Begin By Creating A Villain.

The Horror Of Class Stratification, Racism, And Prejudice Is That Some People Begin To Believe That The Security Of Their Families And Communities Depends On The Oppression Of Others, That For Some To Have Good Lives There Must Be Others Whose Lives Are Truncated And Brutal.

It Has Seemed To Me That Literature, As I Meant It, Was Embattled, That It Was Increasingly Difficult To Find Writing Doing What I Thought Literature Should Do - Which Was Simply To Push People Into Changing Their Ideas About The World, And To Go Further, To Encourage Us In The Work Of Changing The World, To Making It More Just And More Truly Human.