How Reverse Cowgirls Are Made

The story of me

On Tuesday, my new memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, was published. In part it’s about my tenure as a research subject in a groundbreaking University of California, Berkeley 30-year longitudinal study of personality, but it’s also my origin story. As a child, I was spied on. As an adult, I became a spy. Being a voyeur was destiny, you might say. I took the above selfie in late 2018, in one of the experiment rooms in Tolman Hall, a Brutalist building on the north side of the U.C. Berkeley campus, in which I was studied from chilhood and into adulthood. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called my book “a fascinating debut memoir” and “gripping stuff.” Kirkus Reviews deemed it “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.” On X, my writer friend Eric Spitznagel opined: “If you find most memoirs lacking in stories involving tumor babies and porn actors pretending to be firemen, YOU’RE IN LUCK!!” You can buy a copy of Data Baby here.

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