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Rich kids gave us their old clothes. They were the best clothes we ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.

I still call Texas home. It is where I spent most of my life growing up.

I grew up in Houston, in a pretty urbane setting.

Houston, we've had a problem.

I was called McG since the day I was born because we were broke and there were three Joes in the house.

I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice.

My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an 'o' to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an 'o' at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.

My mother was a union member. She was a mail carrier, a rural mail carrier. She called herself a 'postal packin' grandma' for a good period of time.

I'm from Houston. I think I was thirty-seven before I ever set foot in Dallas, and that was just in the airport. So I've never really been there. Dad grew up in Port Arthur, Texas and all I can ever get out of him is, 'I wanted my first son to be named Dallas.'