Notes from the Road

My mother and I were eating arugula salads today in a bookstore in New Haven called Atticus Books. The Foremost Good Fortune wasn't on the shelves of the New Non-Fiction. We went up the register. My mother asked where my book was. Then the manager looked my book up. "Wait," she said. "We just got twelve in!" So she ran to the stock room. She brought back an armload, and I signed six of them and then she said, "This is so exciting, I can't wait to put them on the shelf." It was kind of a debut author's dream. And then she did put them on the shelf while I stood there watching. And where she put them was right next to Tiger Mother. The Amy Chua polemic. Amy Chua. Susan Conley. Alphabetization. I didn't realize until that moment that it was my fate to be next to the Tiger in every bookstore in America. Is this a curse or a blessing?

Here is a picture of the books.