"Possible the most brutally, hilariously accurate portrait of post colonial Jamaica I’ve ever read. And it’s a novel about the Philippines."

"This is my favorite Britney record, and Blackout is one of my favorite albums of all time. I remember hearing this song and thinking the lyrics were incredible, especially the part about sneaking away to the Philippines. It elevated my love for Britney because it was personal and kind of a ’Fuck you’ as well. The auto-tuned verse made it sound like it was from the future. It hasn’t dated at all"

"This may be about the same time, sort of, in my life. It was The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, General Billy Mitchell, for maybe disobeying the orders of just how he should approach sinking Navy ships. The reason that that has a significance to me is that my father’s first assignment in the Air Corps was as an aide to Billy Mitchell in the Philippines, and that’s where he met my mother, my father met my mother. It’s told to me by the family that not only did Jimmy Doolittle bounce me on his knee, but Billy Mitchell did too."

"A dystopian novel that feels like it could be happening today, where women who either can’t or won’t carry their own pregnancies rent the wombs of a hand-picked cohort of gestational surrogates, who spend their nine months being closely monitored in a posh resort that’s like Canyon Ranch meets the panopticon. The story follows Jane, a poor surrogate from the Philippines, desperate to obtain a better life for her daughter, and the women around her, from the older nanny who hooks her up with the gig to the wealthy young striver who dreamed up the business to a fellow surrogate who has reasons of her own for participating in the project. Nobody’s motives are pure and, when one of the surrogates threatens to expose the Farm, it turns out that the business of surrogacy is as complicated as motherhood itself."