Growing up, I loved the imagery I saw from America as it celebrated being the land of the free and home of the brave.

I was really sheltered growing up, with six brothers and sisters. We played together all the time, and I was living in a fantasy world, like most creative people.

When I was growing up, David Bowie was my idol. I grew up in inner-city London, and he was from Brixton, which is even more urban.

My memories of London Fashion Week are of starting out and not getting many tickets for fashion shows, but wanting to see them so much that I'd sneak in with my friends, people like Pat McGrath and Craig McDean.

Asian American success is often presented as something of a horror - robotic, unfeeling machines psychotically hellbent on excelling, products of abusive tiger parenting who care only about test scores and perfection, driven to succeed without even knowing why.

I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're often participants.

I don't think anyone has a normal family.

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.