This week, the Code Switch team is sharing conversations with some of our favorite authors about the books we’re starting the decade with. Today, senior correspondent Karen Grigsby Bates talks to Susan Straight about her new memoir, In The Country of Women . I cannot even remember when I met Susan Straight for the first time—it’s been that long. I do remember we were both starting out in our careers. We bonded over a shared passion for reading and writing, and over the challenges of bringing up brown children in a world that didn’t always value them. She is good people, steady and true. Since our initial meetup, she’s has gone on to receive critical praise for her novels ( including National Book Award nominations ) and I’ve gone on to…well, to interview esteemed authors like her. To date, Straight has published nine novels , almost all of them hung on the spine of her hometown of Riverside, Calif. Her stories are saturated with issues of family, race, migration and history. Straight