I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that's important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.

I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.

Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.

On one hand, I think it's very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it's not talked about, then we won't progress. What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.

Ganesh Chaturthi is very close to my heart. The festival brings with it joy, love, and happiness for everyone.

Say I lived until 80 and read a book a month seriously, that means I was looking at 480 books left in my life. If I had only 480 left, I wanted to stop sifting through material I didn't have confidence in and turn my attention to those that I know merited my reading.

As a state legislator, I had worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass a number of bills, including some related to higher education and juvenile justice; I'd created what would become San Antonio's largest book drive and literacy campaign.

You need to support human development and human capital as much as possible. And we've had 25 years of programs, great programs. We supported 125,000 surgeries. We fund 15,000 scholarships every year for college and higher education. We gave bicycles for rural areas. We gave laptops.