Add to ORKGThis essay was written in response to Sri Lankan-American writer and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha\u27s poetry collection Love Cake, as part of a directed study I undertook in Spring 2021. A goal of the directed study, titled The Empire Writes Back was to engage with and build upon work by writers from South Asia and the diaspora, of which Piepzna-Samarasinha is a vocal member. In this essay, I explore not only the sense of connection I feel with this poet and her body of work as a result of shared experiences of otherness, trauma, and nationhood, but also my attempts to understand the differences of upbringing, ethnicity and circumstance that distinguish us, and how they have affected us as creatives