I grew up with parents who were English professors at Wichita State University, and we were more liberal-minded as a family than most of the people I hung out with in Wichita. During summers, we went off to Telluride, Colorado, where I've returned every summer since I was born.
At every point I wished that I was born English. They need to make it colder in here. You could hang meat in this room. But, yeah...I grew up in a very English household. My folks were from Liverpool. I've said this before, but there is nothing more English than an Englishman that no longer lives in England.
I'm born in Alaska, grew up in Colorado, went to college in Colorado, went to Colorado State, and I actually finished my degree.
One day, my youngest uncle - the other one who was first to go to college, Randy - and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up - he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.
I have three brothers and one sister, and I'm the third child. Sometimes people say, 'It's only natural you would become a writer - your parents were English professors.' But my four siblings were brought up in the exact same household, and no one else became a writer or an English professor.
I spent my summers in a war zone because my parents were afraid that if we didn't go back to Palestine every single summer, we'd grow up to be Madonna.
My parents were a little more on the hippie spectrum of Christianity - they weren't liberal Christians by any means, they were pretty conservative - but they preached mostly about love and caring for people, so I grew up with a lot of compassion and empathy.
Since then I have held many jobs at museums in Colorado and Wyoming. I have also taught summer courses at the University of Colorado.
My family were Conservative Jews. My parents were both born in this country, but my father grew up on the Lower East Side, and my mother was born and raised in Harlem when there was a large Jewish 'colony' there. Eventually, they moved to Jersey City to get away from New York.
My family was reasonably liberal. Some kids I grew up with, their parents forced them to join the military, and my parents never, ever even brought it up. I imagine just looking at me, they were like "Not an army officer."
My grandparents were far more English in their manners than they were Chinese. For example, we spoke English at home, had afternoon tea every day, and my grandfather, who attended university in Scotland, would smoke his pipe after dinner.
I grew up in Siena and was surrounded by the Palio, and all my friends at school were obsessed with it. But since my parents are English, I was never quite part of it.
I think I'm this sort of perpetual outsider, I grew up most of my life in countries that were neither where I was born nor where either of my parents were from. I was part of a weird religion that nobody had heard of.
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
I grew up in a very fundamentalist, evangelical Christian household. Both my parents were born-again - their faith infused every aspect of my childhood. I'll probably spend most of my life working through that.
I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us, made it very clear what we were.
I've worked at this film festival in Telluride called the Telluride Film Festival. Been there since 2002. I used to make popcorn. I was an usher. Cleaned toilets, everything. Grew up there as a kid.