What Was The Duty Of The Teacher

[on Her Writing Agenda:] Make The Familiar Exotic; The Exotic Familiar.

You See For Me, America Is An Idea. It Is A Stage For Transformation. I Felt When I Came To Iowa City From Calcutta That Suddenly I Could Be A New Person . . . What America Offers Me Is Romanticism And Hope . . . Suddenly, I Found Myself In A Country Where

We Do Things When It Is Our Time To Do Them. They Do Not Occur To Us Until It Is Time; They Cannot Be Resisted, Once Their Time Has Come. It's A Question Of Time, Not Motive.

Ancestral Habits Of Mind Can Be Constricting; They Also Confer One's Individuality.

Through My Fiction, I Make Mainstream Readers See The New Americans As Complex Human Beings, Not As Just The Other.