The sooner you learn that you have to be independent, that you are alone, and if there are people to help you it's a blessing, but it's not a given-I… - Shirley Geok-lin Lim

The political and social struggle for civil rights itself can transform the outsider into a citizen.

I think that's what most writers do. They sit down and concentrate. It's as if you tap into your alpha waves. Otherwise, your mind is constantly wandering a the world calls out to it. That's ordinary, everyday consciousness. But I believe that the consciousness from which creativity comes is this intensity of focus that is the result of practice. Sylvia Plath wrote exercise poems. Writing poetry is itself a form of exercise, a discipline as much as it is a calling and an art. And a discipline always asks for exercise. I tell my students that you can't read about playing tennis in a book and then go out and be a good tennis player. You have to be out there hitting that ball and hitting it again and again to become the best tennis player possible. So if you want to be a good poet, you have to be working and working and working on the craft. Practice. Practice. Practice.

There's so much of this mixing occurring all over the world, and the political stability and openness to the transformations that are happening here are not in place yet. America allows it to happen, although not without pain.