Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is bookworm, and I'm very excited to be talking to someone I've been wanting to talk to for some time now.

This is the first time.

Dancy Senna is my guest. She is the author

of the novel, New People. I found it to be a very funny and at the same time disturbing, distressing

novel, largely because it has its finger on subject matter that's crucial

to the way we're living and thinking and reading and writing now.

Your mother is a writer.

Your father was a writer. Your aunt is a writer, your father was a writer, your aunt is a writer, your husband is a writer,

and many of these various writers were married in what were then called biracial couples.

Yeah. So this has always been... in what were then called biracial couples.

Yeah.

So this has always been a subject matter for you when now it's succumbing the subject matter.

It's funny.

I like that you said that the book was funny and disturbing because I think I always am interested

...