It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.

As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten its recurrence.

I was a lesbian for a semester at Wesleyan - it was a graduation requirement.

Here are my Mommy Messages: Wear a condom and test your Molly.

In fact if I see you drinking I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks and call your mom.

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.