Rumaan Alam

I didn't know, at 22, that everything that happens to you, the good stuff as well as the less-good stuff, accrues and becomes your life.

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.

Every Christmas, I cook an elaborate Mexican dinner.

Every sense has the power to transport us through time, but it's taste I find the most mysterious, and writing about it often results in tortured metaphors.

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

Children's picture books are a unique record of social evolution: in gender roles and racial politics, as is much discussed, but also in fashion and interior design.