Margaret K. Nelson is A. Barton Hepburn Professor Emerita of Sociology at Middlebury College. She is the author of many books, including Like Family: Narratives of Fictive Kinship; Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children's Nurse in a Northern White Household (with Emily K. Abel); and Sociology Meets Memoir: An Exploration of Narrative and Method (New York University Press).