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My mother, as far as I can remember, has been a feminist and that was another thing that I didn't realize was slightly unusual in a household like mine. But also, I think a lot of working-class black women and educated black women — my mother is educated, both my parents went to college — are feminists, but wouldn't articulate as such whereas my mother would. ...

She would always say things like, when people talk about "When we get married," she'd say, "If you get married," and talk about a lot of things as a choice. Or she would always tell this story of a friend of hers who was raising a child on her own and somebody would say, "Oh, you need a husband," and the friend would say, "No, I need a wife." So she was very conscious of the hierarchy of gender and these kinds of things.

On a real-life incident that inspired her to write one scene in the book

One time my mom ... sat me down, we were sitting there, and she said, "You know your father and I aren't married." And I was like, "Really?" And she was like, "Yeah." And I'm struggling because I'm thinking like, my mom is the one who told me not to say "illegitimate." It doesn't matter, but at the same time it kind of does matter.

She was lying. This was some kind of weird prank just to see what [I] would say.

And so I think what I'm doing in the book is thinking about [how] in that moment I felt so like something dropped away, even though I had been taught not to feel that way. I had been taught not to be invested in this foolishness. But that's part of why it's there, because it was a part of this learning process that Kenya undergoes about her parents and about the mythologies of her childhood that fall away. And I could draw on that one bizarre moment of my mom's sense of humor.

On Solomon's experience attending an affluent private school

It was alienating in a lot of ways, but I certainly got an excellent education. I guess it took me a long time to understand the mix of feelings I have about that. It's something I've written about a lot and thought about a lot because [Bryn Mawr's Baldwin School] was a great school, aesthetically it was beautiful, I got to do so many things, but I always felt just kind of cold and out of it there.

I and a lot of the other black students were just marginal because we were black. We would never be at the core of the social experience of that school, I felt, because we were black.

- Asali Solomon

There were things that could clearly explain this, like people really would ask me questions about the city, like, "Were there pools of blood on the ground?" and people would say things that were subtly or not-so-subtly racist. And class was a big issue. A lot of the kids were wealthy.

We weren't poor, but we weren't wealthy. We didn't have a lot of money — and that was something that was always there. I was very nervous about people coming to my house, which, in a lot of cases, they were not even allowed to do, because they weren't allowed to come to West Philadelphia.

But I think that recently I was thinking about how to articulate it. And I would say that in that situation I and a lot of the other black students were just marginal because we were black. We would never be at the core of the social experience of that school, I felt, because we were black. ... I didn't go to high school there, but I imagine that would've only increased as people got into dating, because [we] weren't going to be dating out there.

On the trade-off of attending a school where you feel marginalized

The thing that's difficult about "good schools" where you feel alienated or socially marginal, is that depending on who you are as a person, you can make it out of that and write fiction about it — about the pain that you experience. But a different kind of person won't necessarily get the benefit of the education because they're so broken as a person by that experience. So that's a kind of risk there. For me, I was definitely affected in ways that were negative and positive. But I think partially my ability to communicate about it in this way really means that it was a positive.

Read an excerpt of Disgruntled

President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast today, condemned the twisting of religion to justify killing innocent people, saying that it always goes against the will of God. He also praised the Dalai Lama, who was in attendance, calling him a good friend.

The audience of 3,600 people gathered for the annual event in Washington included for the first time the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who has lived in exile since 1959, when he fled Tibet amid a Chinese takeover. Beijing objects to any official recognition of the Dalai Lama by foreign governments.

Even so, Obama has met privately with the Dalai Lama on several occasions and today referred to him in remarks as "a good friend."

But the main focus of the speech was on concerns about religiously inspired acts of terror, echoing a theme he has touched on in past prayer breakfasts.

"From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence from those who profess to stand up for faith and in the name of religion," the president said.

He pointed out the "horrific acts of barbarism in the name of religion" and the "rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe" which, he said, was often justified by faith.

"No god condones terror," the president said. "We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends," he said, describing militants of the self-declared Islamic State as a "death cult."

The Associated Press says it was the first time Obama and the Dalai Lama attended the same public event.

The president, who the AP says clashed his hands in prayer, smiled and nodded the Tibetan leader called him "a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion."

He "inspires us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings," Obama said.

National Prayer Breakfast

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Dalai Lama

President Obama

Taipei's mayor and others are hailing the pilot of TransAsia Flight 235, which crashed Wednesday shortly after takeoff, for steering the aircraft into a river and avoiding buildings and likely more casualties.

"We really have to thank that pilot," a tearful Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je said of Liao Chien-tsung, the 42-year-old pilot who died in the crash. "He really tried his hardest."

The comments were reported by The Associated Press.

Dramatic video of the crash showed the ATR 72-600 propjet barely clearing buildings near Taipei's Songshan airport, clipping an elevated roadway with its left wingtip before falling into the shallow Keelung River. The plane was carrying 58 people; at least 31 of them were killed. Fifteen passengers survived the crash; 12 are still missing.

"The pilot's immediate reaction saved many people," said Chris Lin, brother of one of the survivors, told Reuters. "I was a pilot myself and I'm quite knowledgeable about the immediate reaction needed in this kind of situation."

Experts said it's too soon to tell whether Liao's actions prevented a higher toll. Investigators are piecing together what happened to the aircraft, which crashed shortly after takeoff. The plane's black boxes were recovered Wednesday.

Liao has nearly 5,000 flying hours under his belt, Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration said; his copilot, who also was killed, had nearly 7,000 hours.

Reuters adds: "Taiwanese media reported that Liao, the son of street vendors, passed exams to join the air force. He later flew for China Airlines, Taiwan's main carrier, before joining TransAsia."

The AP reported today that moments before the plane crashed one of the pilots told the control tower: "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout."

The aircraft itself was less than a year old; one of its engines had been replaced in April 2014 because of a fault with the original engine.

Aviation experts say the ATR 72-600, the most modern version of the plane made by ATR, is among the most popular turboprop planes worldwide. It is known to be safe and reliable, as well as cheap and efficient to operate.

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plane crash

Megan Rice celebrated her 85th birthday last week — in a high-rise detention center in Brooklyn.

The Catholic nun is serving nearly three years in prison for evading security and painting peace slogans on the walls of a nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Rice is far from the only religious figure to run into legal trouble. There's a long tradition of Catholic clergy protesting nuclear weapons, from the Berrigan brothers in the 1980s to the fictional nun Jane Ingalls, featured in the series Orange is the New Black.

Rice, a member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, spent decades working and teaching in Africa. She too has a long history of protest, even before she allegedly joined two men to throw human blood and write slogans on a building that houses enriched uranium in 2012.

Now, from inside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Rice is continuing her own brand of activism. With the help of friends and advocates including the National Association of Women Judges, Rice is drawing attention to conditions inside U.S. corrections facilities.

She and a few hundred others had been set to live in a women's prison in Danbury, Conn., the same one that served as a model for Orange is the New Black.

After authorities decided to overhaul that facility, the Catholic nun was sent to what was supposed to be a temporary holding center.

Brenda Murray, a federal administrative law judge, has been closely following Sister Rice's case because one of her friends entered the convent at the same time.

"It seems ridiculous to put somebody like that long term on the ninth floor of a high-rise building," Murray says. "I mean, that was supposed to be a temporary situation 'til we resolved Danbury, and it isn't been temporary. And it just is unfair."

A high rise might sound luxurious. But in this case, friends say, more than 100 women share six bathrooms.

A study by the Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School says the detention center in Brooklyn has much less to offer than the one in Connecticut.

Pat McSweeney, a retired ninth-grade English teacher, knows that firsthand. McSweeney befriended Sister Rice years ago at a protest. She describes the Brooklyn holding center as "like a big cement box, huge."

McSweeney visits when she can, and keeps in touch by phone or e-mail.

"When I've asked her a couple of times if she can go outside, no she can't," McSweeney says.

Rice insists she's fine, but friends say conditions in the Brooklyn facility are taking a toll on her. For one thing, the cap came off her front tooth months ago.

"There was a long time when she was carrying the cap around in her pocket," McSweeney says, "and then I think she did see someone and it was on, when her niece from Boston visited her, but it must have come off again."

Things are even more complicated when it comes to women's health care behind bars. That's because advocates say every facet of the Bureau of Prisons system was designed for men, even though women are very different.

"The majority, the vast majority of women in federal prisons are not violent offenders," says retired federal appeals court judge Pat Wald.

Wald says research demonstrates that incarcerated women need time with family members and friends, and special programs to help them get ready to leave prison. She says those are programs that seem to be unavailable for Sister Rice and others locked up in the Brooklyn facility.

Yale Law School Professor Judith Resnik has been studying prisons for more than 30 years. She says the best solution is for authorities to look, case by case, at the inmates holed up in Brooklyn.

"A national review of those incarcerated with the end state of asking who need not be here or who could be in a less secure facility would be the desired end state," Resnik says.

For Megan Rice, that question could be moot by November. That's when the Bureau of Prisons web site says she's scheduled for release.