Sometimes I react against what I read, sometimes I react in solidarity with what I read. My friends, who were working on journals such as Fireweed, inspired, coaxed and coerced me to write. I wrote against the articles I read in the magazines and newspapers, the hate literature of the conservative right. Check out my article on Asian Lesbian History in the now defunct Rites newspaper. I wrote against invisibility and I wrote for the joy of writing.
Inspiration works both ways.
History shapes my writing. History trickles down into my work, some times it pours. There was a vicious anti-south Asian feeling present in this country during the seventies. Then we heard how a South Asian man was pushed from the subway platform. And I saw how some students were treated in my school, my classroom.