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The question

What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

HJ
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Well, I’m happiest on Martha’s Vineyard, between July 1 and Labor Day, riding my tricycle with Larry Bobo every afternoon and fishing with Buddy Vanderhoop. But I was happiest from my childhood through high school in Piedmont, West Virginia; it was magical. I was sorry when it was time to go off to college.

Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, March 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 577 →
Busta Rhymes American rapper
When I was young and carefree, before I realised what the obstacles were that we face as black people. I was raised in a beautiful home with incredible parents. They allowed me to enjoy what it was to be a child.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 December 2020 source ↗
Steph McGovern Broadcaster
At the beginning of lockdown; it was just me and my new baby and my partner in the house. It was lovely.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 November 2020 source ↗
Alan Dale New Zealand actor
I have never been happier than I am now. As for when I was happiest in my work, playing King Arthur in Spamalot in the West End.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 March 2009 source ↗
Johanna Konta British tennis player
When I was a young girl in Sydney, I used to go running with my dad. I would wake him up at the crack of dawn and we had this route to the top of a golf course – we’d usually make it there for sunrise.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 June 2018 source ↗

More from Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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Question What do you fear most? Identity & self
That we will be remembered as a people who locked our fellow citizens in cages and who believe that some people are rich and some people are poor because “it’s their nature” and that racism and poverty are inevitable parts of the order of things; that M.L.K. and Bobby Kennedy died in vain; and that no one any longer believes what M.L.K. said in his Nobel Prize address in Oslo: “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.”
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, March 2019 source ↗
Question What does happiness look like for you when life is going well? Identity & self
Late one Sunday afternoon, my three-year-old granddaughter, out of the blue, took my hand and said she wanted to whisper something to me. Could we go for a ride around the block before we all sat down for dinner? Just the two of us? Holding hands as we walked to and from the car in the driveway: Bliss.
Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 March 2019 source ↗

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