Growing up in the '80s in central New Jersey as a weird kid with a blue mohawk listening to the Sex Pistols and dressing really funky, I was bullied pretty badly. It was every single day in elementary school and kept going into middle school, too. I felt totally alone, without a single person there for me.

Growing up in New Jersey, teen clubs were your life. I'm not kidding! That was it. I was literally tied up five days a week with teen clubs; my parents would drop me off. Like, I didn't even drive.

I am a biological female. I have two children. I've been married for 16 years. I've never been a man.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

I'm Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made.

Food not only connects us at the idyllic dinner table setting with family and friends: it is also part of our mundane, daily transit to and from work.

I was in a military family, so by the time I was 13 I'd lived in six different places.

I'd be a liar if I said I had a normal family.