To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim. - bell hooks

There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense of the world we live in; writing is a way to clarify, to interpret, to reinvent. We may want our work to be recognized, but that is not the reason we write. We do not write because we must; we always have a choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate. We communicate to connect, to know community.

"For too long the term domestic violence has been used as a
"soft" term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is
private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence
that takes place outside the home. This is not so, since more women
are beaten and murdered in the home than on the outside."

Like many white liberals, Ken sees the “whiteness” of his social life as more an accident of circumstance than a choice. He would welcome greater diversity in the neighbourhood. However, he does not consciously do enough work either in his social life or in the larger community to make that diversity possible.