We are a mixed marriage, so our kids were raised with a little less Judaism than I was raised with.
My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African-American, so I had a pretty diverse culinary background to work with.
We were brought up Protestant, and I went to church three times a day on a Sunday. My parents weren't Bible-bashers, but we all have a strong belief in God and a strong faith. We had a huge garden; our house was a bit like a scene from 'The Good Life.' I think Mam and Dad had it really hard, bringing up a big family on very little.
'Khalifa' is Arabic, it means successor, leader, shining light. My granddad is Muslim and he gave me that name.
My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.
My surname Volkanovski comes from my father's side, so I have many Macedonian supporters and I really appreciate it.
My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."
I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British.
Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.
My family wasn't involved in the college. They were more of just your 'white trash' kind of family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through.
My family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons... It wasn't forced on me. It was something I wanted to do. And ever since, I've never stopped, I've never stopped playing music. I never went through a period where I didn't want to do it.
I feel like I grew up in the investment business. My dad was at T. Rowe Price his whole career. We lived in Baltimore and had a small social circle, so most of my dad's friends also worked for T. Rowe.
My parents were both from Scotland, but had been resident in Lower Canada some time before their marriage, which took place in Montreal; and in that city I spent most of my life.
I'm from a family of educators. I grew up with books in my house and in my hands and my parents in my life.
In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.
I came from a working-class family. My dad was in a union. I never forgot what it was like to be a private.
My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.
I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville.
My family is from Elmhurst, Queens, 54th Avenue, but I was born in Northern California.
Let's face it. My dad was a mechanic, and my mom was a cop: my college options in seventh grade didn't look that great. And the chance I got to go to college and experience college life is something that's pretty precious to me.
My father was a minister, and my mother was a music teacher.
Both grandfathers fought in different wars. My mother's father fought in World War II, and then my father's father fought in Korea. And they're both these country boys, one from rural Tennessee and one from rural Louisiana - and they never went back home.
I never had a strategy about my life. I didn't have enough information to have a strategy. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I had no family mentors.
My father is from the village of Beranci, Macedonia, and my mother is from Greece.
When I started, I had nothing. Because my family was really, really, really poor.
