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Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal.

I tend to approach characters not based on ethnicity but on some unique individual qualities, and I've set my whole life that way. I don't want any sort of limitations imposed on my work. If you truly want to be a creative person, you can't limit yourself.

White writers in many cases choose not to populate their fiction with people of color. A lot of what I'm doing is trying to write against that, not about race but against the avoidance of race that's such a dominant model in white literary discourse.

Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.

When I started publishing my work, one of the biggest surprises to me was the recurring question about my background and why I wasn't doing more stories about Asian-Americans.

I think novels - or any art form - can have a powerful impact on people's perceptions of race, particularly if they draw attention to the absurd inconsistencies and stereotypes we all carry around with us and don't want to think about.

I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

I was moved by the 'Lovings' story because of my own background as a mixed-race person.