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" I do think that I have a sensitivity to the depictions of maybe all minorities in literature. And I think that the experience of people who look like me is so rarely captured in big, mainstream American fiction that you tend to sort of empathize with any character of color who pops up. "

Rumaan Alam

Think

Experience

People

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" I have a theory that because my kitchen is small, you can't preheat an oven and deal with dough at the same time, although maybe it's just that I'm a bad baker. "

" I married the man I love when the state of California said I could. We made a family through adoption, as New York State said we could. From the outside, our family - two dads, two sons via adoption - seems like an experiment, but what family isn't an experiment? "

" When you are what we call a 'minority writer,' a writer of color, a writer of any kind of difference, there is some kind of presumption of autobiography in everything you produce. And I find that really maddening, and I resist that. "

" I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and what I like about that place is that there's not a strong regional affect in the cultural imagination like there is in Dallas or San Francisco or New York City. You have a little more freedom as a novelist this way. The suburbs become a generic idea, and the place doesn't intrude into the narrative. "

" I think that in the cultural imagination, motherhood has a primacy that fatherhood just doesn't; and that's not to say that there aren't many fathers who are active and engaged and for whom that is their life's passion. But somehow, in the imagination, there's something different about maternity. "

" Because the designers at Baby Gap and Crew Cuts have determined it would be cute if kids dressed like their dads, seemingly every American male between 2 and 52 dresses identically. "

" We have all come from a woman in some fashion. "

" I reject the notion that one should feel guilty about what you don't know. "

" Blackness, any sort of difference, is not a burden. Relegating blackness or other sorts of difference to serious books that explicitly engage with issues creates a context in which it can seem like one. "

Rumaan Alam

Difference

Burden

" Baking is a matter of precision and timing, but I just make things up as I go. "

Rumaan Alam

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" Children's literature - the product of adult guesswork - often fails to account for its audience's slippery grasp on the world. "

" In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels. "

" I'm a square. I always wanted the standard-issue American dream: beautiful home, loving husband, couple of kids. I met another square, and we got married; a year later, we had a baby; three years later, had another. "

" Lindsay Hatton's novel 'Monterey Bay' so beautifully evokes the landscape of the titular locale, you'll feel transported to Northern California even if you're reading it on the bus on your morning commute. "

" When we had our first son, four different people gave us the same present: a copy of Ezra Jack Keats' 'The Snowy Day.' A new child often inspires duplicate gifts - we were given a dozen mostly useless baby blankets, just one more thing to spit up on - but this one was different. "

" Truly smart people and truly smart dressers share one thing in common: They make it look easy. "

" I think it's a not-uncommon experience for gay boys, young men, and even older men to spend a lot of time in the company of women. "

" There is a tendency to presume autobiography in fiction by women or minorities. Guys named Jonathan write universal stories, while there's this sense that everyone else is just fictionalizing their own small experiences. "

" Some writers are prolific; some are shape-shifters. It's rare and intimidating to encounter one who is both. "

" Children's books deal in idealized worlds, so they're a document of how our notion of ideal worlds has changed over time. "

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" Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader. "

" I don't want the staggeringly wealthy Elton John and his family to represent the standard of gay fatherhood any more than straight people want the stunningly beautiful Angelina Jolie and her family to represent the standard of heterosexual parenthood. Stars are outliers; stars are exceptions. "

" History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story. "

" Nothing is ever ideal. You have to work all the same. "

" Among this country's enduring myths is that success is virtuous, while the wealth by which we measure success is incidental. We tell ourselves that money cannot buy happiness, but what is incontrovertible is that money buys stuff, and if stuff makes you happy, well, complete the syllogism. "

" Everyone on Twitter - everyone on the Internet - seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn't allow for nuance, and it's a nice complement to confidence. "

" Vanity is a sensitive subject for gay men. "

" The cultural conversation around privilege has grown vibrant enough that the ultimate privilege is to just ignore it altogether. Some decry this conversation as pernicious. I don't agree. "