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Sunday, February 26, 2006

 

Fear not the other

Jeffrey M. Anderson does a special column every week for the weekend edition of the San Francisco Examiner/Independent. I love his column, which is titled "Why I Write." Each week he interviews another writer and asks them the question, "Why do you write?"

This is how writer Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi : A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America answered the question:

"On a personal level, I write because I find it immensely rewarding. A well-crafted sentence makes me beam every time. But I also write because there has always been a part of me that wants to make the world a kinder place. By sharing our first-person stories, we shed the light on our shared humanity and we take away the fear of the "other." I am acutely aware of being the "other" right now.

What an answer. I hope I can think of something as powerful and poignant when I am interviewed by Jeffrey M. Anderson.

What would you say? How would you answer the question, "Why do you write?"

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