I belong to the American legacy and deserve a place in it. - Marilyn Chin

When Americans talk about racial politics they talk about the poles of black and white, where one group may be demonized and one group may be sanctified. I think that we must meet in the gray space in between to find harmony.

I am gratified that some of my poems have served the people for decades. From the start of my career I waxed personal and political and have sought to be an activist-subversive-radical-immigrant-feminist-transnational-Buddhist-neoclassical-nerd poet who was always on her soapbox with a bag of tricks. I see myself as an inventor of a fusionist aesthetics, of bilingual and bicultural hybrid forms.

poetry is my passion. It is my art. It is my love, it is my first love beyond all loves, beyond romantic love. It's as necessary for me as breathing is necessary for me. I can't live without it.