How is memoir writing different?
This was a story that I’d been thinking about for so long that it came out pretty quickly. I would imagine I’d effectively done tons of rewriting just in my head, remembering it over the years. I think that I remembered it especially because it was the first time I understood, viscerally, how race and class and all of that actually worked—how those with the advantage could use it without ever having appeared to use it. What other jobs have you had on your way to becoming a full-time writer? Didn’t you play in a rock band? And weren’t you an engineer? How have these jobs, individually or collectively, influenced your writing? I feel funny about this question, because I am aware of the tendency of writers to list all of their Hard Jobs while metaphorically standing against a locker with a toothpick in their mouth: “Yeah, I was a headless fisherman who had bamboo stakes driven up my ass to make a little extra cash, after which I was beaten to death three times a day in Kosovo, just before
