When I was growing up, I, like many Jews, cheered what appeared to be the receding of faith from everyday life. The further religion got from our lives the better our lives would get, I thought, because persecution had been such a burden to Jewish families for generations.

I grew up in the age of discount air fare, and for me, the act of joining a culture was a great way about learning about that different culture. So I grew up in the South, and went to college in the North, and found out that I learned about myself as a Southerner by leaving the South and going to the Northeast.

I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s.

When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.

I try to keep a balance. I actually believe that children want normal parents, they don't want celebrities or important parents or anything different from all the other parents.

In the United States, if you're African-American, it can be assumed that your family has been here for generations. In Europe, colonialism is much more alive, and it's assumed you're from Nigeria or Senegal.

My family was really big on college, and it was hard for them to stomach that I was going to be a hairdresser.