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If there was something to get out of, some place or class, in many ways I am still there and perhaps always will be. I am there by choice, to some extent, appreciating its riches that shaped me—the wildness of a childhood untended, freedom from expectation, a robust, learned understanding of my own…

What we lost in stability, by way of our economic lot, we gained in adaptability, in hard clarity about what does and doesn’t last. During the Great Recession in 2008, both my parents lost their jobs and entered one of the hardest stretches of their lives. But, while some members of the middle clas…

Grandma was right: I did think I was too good for the environment I’d been born into. But I thought she was, too. I thought everyone was. So my intention was to get as much attention as possible. Not because I reveled in it—I was a quiet loner, most often—but because I knew that was the only way I’…