My fiction explores dislocation as it molds character and persona. Dislocation is trauma and opportunity. “Not from here” is an identity. Each language or dialect is an alter ego. An accent is a skin. My characters are chameleons, who hide or reveal their foreignness at will, change persona with language; those who can’t adapt and reject a new culture; who paste foreign elements on an unchanged identity in hopes of passing. All seek some quality or condition—empathy, acceptance, visibility, obscurity—which they can’t find in their own cultures.
