The author, illustrator, and narrator of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast is a successful cartoonist. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and children, whom her memoir does not depict. She depicts herself in the illustrations as having glasses and blonde hair. Chast is the only child of Elizabeth and George Chast, whose families moved from Russia to America at the turn of the century in search of a better life. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in the same apartment her parents lived in for the rest of their lives. Chast has unhappy memories of her childhood. She recalls that because both her parents worked, she was left in the care of an elderly neighbor and later with various sitters. Her mother’s insistence that she come home for a lunch cooked by the sitter prevented her from making very many friends at school. Chast reflects, “I had no nostalgia for the Carefree Days of Youth, because I never had them” (18). After moving away from Brooklyn, she did not return for 11 years.

Chast notes that her personality is more similar to her father’s: “I was my father’s daughter, not my mother’s” (177).