(The New Yorker) Kamala Harris Makes Her Case

Kamala (in yellow) was born in Oakland and attended law school at UC Hastings.

One day in early June, Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, tapped the glass of the bakery case at a Blue Bottle coffee shop on a non-iconic block in Beverly Hills. No one seemed to know who she was—another polished professional woman, grabbing an afternoon coffee—which was fine by her. She had chosen the spot, presumably for the anonymity. A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie: caramel chocolate chip, covered in a light snowfall of flaky salt. As Harris broke off small pieces and popped them in her mouth, we talked about her early life, rummaging through the layers for identifying details. The child of immigrant academics who divorced when she was young—her mother, a cancer researcher, came from India, and her father, an economist, from Jamaica—Harris grew up between Oakland and the Berkeley flats, but also spent time in college towns in the Midwest and a few years in Montreal, where her mother was teaching. “A very vivid memory of my childhood was the Mayflower truck,” she told me. “We moved a lot.” She speaks some French. She loves to cook and enjoys dancing, puns. She tells her own story uneasily. “It’s like extracting stuff from me,” she apologized. “I’m not good at talking about myself.”