This is called Lu, 1958.
My mother was quite a mad woman, wonderfully mad,
just wonderful.
And I think mad is what you call her.
She wrote poetry.
Neither of my parents graduated from elementary school.
My father didn't write at all.
He couldn't write didn't know how.
But he was a great reader.
Both my parents were great readers.
My mother read everything she could find about China.
My mother never saw, in the flesh, a Chinese person.
She was very into reading about China.
I still have some pearl books, books that my mother had.
Anyway, Lu, 1958.
This is what I know, my mother went mad in my father's house
for want of tenderness.
This is what I know.
She was younger than the coffin wood, still green and possible.
This is what I know, some women burned sorrow on their skin
in the kitchens of their lives.
This is what I know, the gods are men.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]