She is the biological younger sister of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. She was born after her parents had married and did not meet Jobs, who was placed for adoption after he was born, until she was 25 years old.[5]
Early life
Mona Jandali was born on June 14, 1957, in
University of Wisconsin in 1954, Schieble became pregnant and, given her parents' resistance to the relationship, decided to place the baby for adoption. Six months after she placed the baby for adoption, Schieble's father died, and she then wed Jandali and gave birth to Mona.[6] They divorced in 1962.[7] When Schieble remarried, both she and Mona took the name of her new husband, George Simpson. In 1970, after they divorced, Schieble took Mona to Los Angeles and raised her on her own.[7]
Simpson described herself as a good student as a child but was also "a clown" and "a smart aleck" who used to make jokes in class. "I did get in trouble a lot when I was older and then I didn't like school so much anymore."
In 1986, Schieble was contacted by the son she had given up for adoption, Steve Jobs, who had recently lost his mother to lung cancer. To that point, Simpson was unaware that she had an older brother. Schieble then arranged for Jobs and Simpson to meet in New York where Simpson worked. The two became good friends,[7] and worked together to locate their father, eventually locating Jandali in Sacramento. Simpson later fictionalized the search for their father in the 1992 novel, The Lost Father. (She would create a fictionalized portrait of Jobs in the 1996 novel, A Regular Guy.[7])
In 1994, Simpson returned to the Los Angeles area with her then-husband,
UCLA; she also has an appointment at Bard College in New York state.[3]
Novels
Simpson at the National Book Festival in January 2014
Simpson's novels are drawn from life experiences.[9][10] Her first novel, Anywhere But Here (1986), was a critical and popular success, winning a Whiting Award. In describing her intentions for the novel, Simpson stated:
I wanted to write about American mythologies, American yearnings that might be responses, delayed or exaggerated but in some way typical, to the political and social truths of our part of the world in our century. But I wrote very personally about one family. I think it takes a long time before a crisis—like AIDS—enters the culture to a point where responses exist in a character, where personal gestures are both individual and resonant in a larger way.
The Lost Father
(1992).
A Regular Guy (1996) explores the strained relationship of a
PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Stacey D'Erasmo said, "Off Keck Road marks the place where origin leaves off and improvisation begins".[13]My Hollywood was published in 2011. It explores the complex relationships, issues of class, and perspectives of two women, Claire, a European-American composer in her 30s and mother of one son, and Lola, her immigrant nanny from the Philippines
. The nanny supports her own five children in the Philippines. The novel alternates between the voices of the two women, contrasting their worlds.
