This was the audition that I had been preparing for my entire life. All of the shows I had ever done came down to the moment when I stood onstage in front of the director of that summer’s musical, “Hairspray”. This was my best shot at breaking into show business. The director had been on Broadway at one point, and if you starred in one of his shows, you were all but guaranteed to become famous one day. When...

Growing up, there is no way to avoid the question, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” Of course, most children have no idea what they actually want to be, but they still answer confidently. “I want to be a teacher!” or maybe “I want to be a spy!” or, for me the answer was “I want to be a doctor.” The summer after my freshman year of high school, long after people stopped asking that question,...

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting in my kindergarten classroom, when my mother came to pick me up early from school. Her face was white with fear as I collected my books and left the classroom with her. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” I asked. The mournful silence was palpable on the ride home. It wasn’t until we were in our driveway that she told me what was wrong. “Some very bad men blew up buildings in New York City and...

I was formed by my mother’s smile and my father’s laugh and the smell of my grandmother’s kitchen as she bakes my birthday cake each year. I made myself out of the gleam in a child’s eyes when I teach him a new word, the glimmer of hope in a homeless person when I give her shoes, and the surprised look of a prison guard because I was the youngest person to ever organize a book...

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