I obtained a degree in clinical psychology, which helps, but I’ve always been adept at imagining other people, the conversations they might have, their reasons and motivations. The degree helped me understand the underpinnings of disordered behavior, but I don’t think it would’ve had as much impact if I hadn’t already been very good at empathy.

As I wrote this story, I was mulling over legacy and inheritance, how the way I experience the world now is affected by the way Chinese Americans were treated then. The panic around the bubonic plague resonates with that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent wave of Asian hate, for instance; questions of femininity and labor persist as well.

Many of the attacks aimed at trans people are aimed at removing us from public life. Banning us from restrooms (or forcing us into restrooms where we know we’ll be unsafe), taking away our drivers licenses, forcing us into the closet if we need passports . . .

It was absolutely intentional to not just critique the “traditional” three-act structure but to expose its inherent violence through the story’s very bones. For women like Mirlande, who is undocumented, Black, and Haitian, that very structure gaslights on a narrative level.