This quote from poet Amit Majmudar speaks to the mission of I’m Your Neighbor, Portland beautifully.

“Readers don’t want the differences to estrange them — for all their curiosity, they actually want the differences to disappear. They want to recognize themselves. This is all part of the larger paradox of fiction, where the characters must be specific enough to be anyone. In the end, the packaging may simply serve as an introduction. The true meeting takes place when the book opens, and a stranger reads about — and comprehends — a stranger.”  —Amit Majmudar, a poet and diagnostic nuclear radiologist, is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Abundance.”

Quoted from a New York Times essay, “Am I An ‘Immigrant Writer’?”