To write a memoir is to take the grains of sand-individuals and particulars- and shape them into sandcastles. To make artful narrative of experience that, in the living of it, might have seemed random, even chaotic. Writing a memoir tames the unruly past, but it does not make it docile. Celebrated novelist Laura Kalpakian grew up in Southern California amid a blending of vastly different cultures. Her mother was born in Constantinople,...