There's room for everyone, and everyone is wanted and needed. Whoopi showed me that. When I first saw 'The Color Purple,' it was so huge. That was the first time I had seen myself, my mother, my aunts, women that I had known my whole life on-screen. It gives us hope, and it gives us confidence.
My only way of getting my uncles' attention or aunts' attention or whoever's attention was by dancing and singing around the house.
It was my mom and I against the world. We lived in New York in this bohemian lifestyle where an extended group of artists and photographers were like my aunts and uncles.
I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.
Our house was always full of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
Basically, I grew up watching Carter girls on stage, watching my grandmother, my mom and my aunts perform. They used to say, 'Okay, Carter girls, you're on!'
Whenever I've not known what to do, I've always gone back to the Carter Family because there was nothing like singing with my aunts and my mom to my grandma.
I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.
My dad worked for a generator company and then UC Berkeley, and my mom was as a dental hygienist and then eventually a history teacher. My uncles and aunts, all of them are elementary school teachers or scientists.
Whenever the kindly uncles and aunts came over for a cup of tea and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was always the same: an 'authoress', and illustrate my own books.
