We Can Speculate. Last Time I Checked,

I Seem To Enjoy Telling Stories With A Central Absence, With A Lacuna Tunnelled Into Them.

I Can't Imagine Anybody Who Ends Up Being An Artist Who Didn't Pass Through A Time Of Geekiness.

I Was Neither Black Enough For The Black Kids Or Dominican Enough For The Dominican Kids. I Didn't Have A Safe Category.

As For My Slowness As A Writer - That's Been A Struggle, No Question. We Live In A Culture That Values And Rewards Machine-speed Productivity. Even The Arts Are Expected To Conform To The Taylor Model Of Productivity.

My Father Was A Little League Dictator. That Really Affected Me, His Control-freakery, His Impunity, His Arbitrary Unreasonable Power.