Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.

You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!

Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying.

Usually, the creating of the book happens while I'm writing the book. I start with Chapter One, with a few ideas and a handful of characters, and the book grows from there.

When I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes. Then when I put it on the computer, a different part of my brain kicks in and I really evaluate every single word and sentence and make decisions. I like that step of polishing while I'm rewriting the entire thing, not just cutting and pasting. Really putting in every word and making a decision: is this something I can stand by?

When I finished graduate school, the first George Bush was president, and I really wanted to get out of the country. We'd just gone through the first Gulf War.

To go back to my childhood, I experienced lots of different family cultures, all the while feeling like none of them were mine.