I was born to a single mom and raised by her and my grandparents.

Cancer has been unfortunately in my life. My mom's best friend is kicking ass in her battle with breast cancer. Both of my grandmas had cancer. I recently lost a friend to cancer.

My mom has a tape from when I was like 2 years old talking with my grandma telling her a story that's really elaborate about werewolves and wolves.

My parents and my grandfather on my mom's side would travel the earth. They went to Australia and China and they went to probably every soccer game I ever played.

My mother and my grandmother are pioneers of Mexican cuisine in this country so I grew up in the kitchen. My mom Zarela Martinez was by far my biggest influence and inspiration - and toughest critic.

Miami Beach - that's where I grew up in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor who was my roommate - my grandparents my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.

One of my most sentimental items is my grandmother's engagement ring that my mom gave me a few years ago. It's a Victorian-style setting that's closed in the back so it doesn't sparkle the way diamonds do now. I wear it as a pendant.

It's her first grandchild so she's really really really excited. I guess my mom is a little more stressed out than me.

Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now not even my mom.

President Obama's fight for rural America is personal. He was raised by a single mom and grandparents from Kansas. He hails from a farming state Illinois.