“I didn’t care anymore if all the writers in America were more skilled than I. I began to write because I was no longer concerned about my lack of great gift. I would work with whatever lay within. It was a secret, this notebook of mine. I described things. I remembered scenes. I wrote about the child and what she did. I wrote about my mother and my father and my aunts and my uncles. I wrote the stories my mother had told me about her father and his first years on the Lower East Side. I wrote in the supermarket. I wrote while the child napped. I wrote when the child was crayoning or listening to music.”