Speaking of friends, many thanks to the emotional and intellectual support from mine—grad school pals Kristie Wang, Dana Koster, Will Cordeiro, Téa Obreht, Stephanie DeGooyer, Patrick Ayscue, Sarah Senk, and Michael Collis, along with great teachers Helena Maria Viramontes, Natalie Melas, Stephanie Vaughn, Shirley Samuels, Roland Greene, J. Robert Lennon, Alison Lurie, and Jonathan Monroe. Thanks to Harvard friends Lisa Gordon, Kit Gattis, Dana Gotlieb, Joseph Barretto, Lucia Brawley, and Alex Myers; MIT friends Richard Russell, Dav Clark, and Keith Thoresz; and art school friends Stephen Goldstine, Tanya Zimbardo, and Anna Maltz. Thanks to friends who don’t belong to a definable category: Christina Newhard, Larilyn Sanchez, Julie Sionzon, Andrew Janke, Jess Dalton, Nick Rees, Vanessa Scott, Matthew Davidson, Arlene Bubbico, Rodger Garcia, and Diana Sahagun. Thanks and apologies to all the wonderful friends I’ve temporarily forgotten.

Thanks to the many editors who have immensely improved my work, especially Tennessee Jones, Megan Carpentier, Jacob Gross, Jess Zimmerman, Jen Parker, and Gabriel Arana, who convinced me to become a journalist in the first place. Huge thanks to my wonderful media and writer friends, including Hugh Ryan, Thomas Page-McBee, Raquel Willis, Elsz, Josh Allen, Geena Rocero, Fran Tirado, R. O. Kwon, Amanda Shapiro, Robert Moore, Hannah Giorgis, Kimberly Drew, Devin-Norelle, Drew Philp, Alex Chee, Esmé Wang, and Jacob Tobia. Particular thanks to early readers Peter Kispert, Matt Ortile, and Johnny Pizzolato, as well as wonderful blurbers Garrard Conley, Jenny Boylan, and Alex Marzano-Lesnevich. Enormous and special thanks to Jackson Howard, my sister in twinkness and book gossip; Amber Tamblyn, my sister in child-star-turned-author-slash-feminist fierceness; and Alok Vaid-Menon, my sister in deep gender, Cancer feelings, and bright colors.

Enormous thanks to family and friends who won’t be able to read this but whose spirit I carry with me always: Socorro Talusan, Gaudencio Talusan, Ramon Antonio Talusan, and Joseph Hummel.

Almost finally, enormous thanks to the people who worked tirelessly to make this book the best it can be, especially my stellar editor who has never once asked for an explanatory comma, Elda Rotor, and my cool-as-a-cucumber agent Seth Fishman. Thanks also to the Viking dream team: Elizabeth Vogt in editorial; Maya Baran, Lindsay Prevette, and Sara Delozier in publicity; Nora Alice Demick and Mary Stone in marketing; Nayon Cho for her incandescent cover design; copy editor Andrea Monagle for being so patient with my ESL holdovers; and production editor Lavina Lee for being just as obsessed as me about getting details right.

Special thanks in his own paragraph to Ralph Wedgwood, for everything you’ve given me, including the permission to write this book entirely on my own terms.