As a lonely teenager growing up in Virginia, I fed off any pop culture that could show me different ways of being from what I saw on 'The Cosby Show' reruns or read about in an Ann M. Martin book.

It took me years to find a program that kept me in shape: Gyms felt intimidating, and women's magazines seemed tailored for toning the bodies of already trim white women.

In America, mixed-race identity tends to invite both curiosity and suspicion, largely because few have found a way to interrogate it without centering whiteness as the scale by which to evaluate blackness.

The American understanding of China is filtered through years of politics; we rarely see the culture on its own terms.

I come from a line of self-motivated, determined folk - not grand, not high society, but no-nonsense, family-minded go-getters.

Both of my parents worked, so it was my way of helping around the house by making dinner for my family. I fell in love with it.

The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.

I have a wonderful family: My parents are churchgoing, salt-of-the-earth Southern people. They gave me a lot of love and are so unaffected by fame.