"She needs to be an artist to be an artist-teacher in adult community learning. She needs to do both to become the best she can be."
"Unspeakable is a consideration of the silencing effects of stuttering, political censorship, unspeakable wartime atrocities, and the silent communication within virtual relationships."
"A tree once taught me that those moments of ruin are only a pause, a passage really, on the way to something else."
"When I was first accepted into the PhD by research program in the UK, I had mixed feelings, mainly because I was about to pursue a career that I didn’t have the heart for, and partially because I would need to explore yet another new culture, country, and environment."
"When I return to Sam’s place with the cheesecloth, I smell our “soup” pot. Shit. I envision the blotter headline: ECU Professor busted for marijuana. What a way to make my graduate mentors proud and to show success at this professor business."
"When a favorite perfume ceases to exist, it is another kind of death. Having been created, it leaves a special sort of emptiness," from Eulogy for a Perfume.
I couldn't go to India for the past two years due to COVID-19 uncertainties and be with the rest of my family to help them navigate through this earth-shattering loss when they needed me the most, a sad reality of many international students.”
"Sookie was never meant to be my support dog. The subject of this autoethnographic literary nonfiction, I rescued her when I was 17 years old and it was by far the best decision I have ever made."
Autoethnographic Literary Nonfiction: I Just Want to Go Home – Moving, Loss and Unacknowledged Grief
"Moving away from a beloved home at a tender age was traumatizing, in part, because that home was the only place in which I felt safe."
"For the first time since my adolescence, I am recognizing that I don’t have to believe what everyone believes, nor do I have to base my morals on faceless strangers who don’t know who I am, or what my experiences are."
"I had no idea what the repercussions would be should I disclose my identity to my students. Would I be fired? Would I be questioned? Would I be told not to talk of such things? This reticence is a sad reflection on my internalized homophobia, my being still uncomfortable enough with my identity such that I had to worry about keeping it secret."
"For me, being a feminist simply means I am a strong, independent woman who has ideas and thoughts of her own; but it also means something else, which is an idea that confuses even me. I mean, how could I be a feminist when I am also a conservative woman?"