It is one thing to know your author-man or woman or gay or black or paraplegic or president. It is another thing to choose only man or woman or et cetera, as the only quality of voice empowered to address you, as the only class of sensibility or experience able to understand you, or that you are able to understand.Books are isolated from one another, like gardenias or peaches, lest they bruise or become bruised, or, worse, consort, confuse.There is no shelf for irony.
Richard Rodriguez