It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.
The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.
I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.