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How much do you share about your project and yourself ?
I reveal as much about my life as they care to know, which is usually not much. I’m not that
interesting. As for the project, I explain the topic of my piece and share my preliminary ideas, which
are usually pretty vague. I might say I am writing about poverty, or drugs and people in jail, or what
life is like for a young girl with kids. The bittersweet thing to me is how uninterested most people are
in elaborate detail.
Do you ever arrange activities to see how your characters react?
Rarely, although in a piece about gang girls [“When Manny’s Locked Up,” The New York Times
Magazine, August 14, 1994], I took some of the teenagers to a screening of Mi Vida Loca, Alison
Anders’s movie on girl gang members in L.A. I’d interviewed her and she invited me to the screening.
I simply wanted to know their impression of the movie. Much to the distress of the PR folks and the
attendant critics, the kids hollered and whooped and clapped through the film. One kid tagged a wall.
They threw gang signs. It was a great experience for me as a journalist because I got to see how they
bumped up against another world—one that was, in fact, depicting a version of them. I got to see the
fearful responses of subway riders on the ride back, the nervousness of the movie critics watching a
film about what gang life means.
What is your reportorial persona?
Tentative, shy, perplexed by what I’m seeing. I often feel directionless, and as a reporter, I’m
asking, “Who are you? Help me figure this out.” I’m quite reticent. Once, after the first week of a
trial, as I was working up the nerve to speak to some people, one girl came over to me and said,
“When are you going to come over and talk to us?”
Having said that, once I get going, I’m absolutely in the moment when I’m reporting, if all’s going
well.
How did you pace yourself while reporting and writing Random Family?
I got the contract for Random Family in late 1992, but didn’t really find my focus until 1994–95.
The writing took about two years, but the whole process—from the initial contact, through the editing
— took from 1989 to 2001. Actually, in some ways, it’s ongoing.
I didn’t pace myself well during that project. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have moved into an
apartment in the South Bronx for a few years and completely submerged myself in the book.
Let’s talk about interviewing. Will you negotiate the terms of an interview?
Yes, if explaining qualifies as that. I want the person to know that everything that happens is
potential material for my story. When I’m interviewing someone, especially teenagers, I remind them
that what they say is on the record because when the conversations get good, this awareness can get
lost. They need concrete examples of what the conversation means. I might give them copies of my