Premium Essay

West Side Story: How My Hair Changed My Life

Submitted By
Words 899
Pages 4
I was 12 years old when a purple satin dress changed my life.

My middle school choir was not unique in our watching of West Side Story in class- most anyone whose parents sign them up for choir at that age are subjected to the Romeo and Juliet of musical theater. Typically, this rite of passage is used as a tool to teach kids that dancing and theater can tell stories that they can relate to in the same way that English teachers will try to tell you that Shakespeare is just like a “hardcore dope rap”. In short, it makes kids cringe, and I was not unique in my eye-rolling at this movie. We were unique, however, in that the local theater was putting on a production of West Side Story, so we all got to take an afternoon off school to go and tour the set, ask questions, and then attend a performance at Drury Lane.

We were a poorly behaved group of kids, if I remember right- we giggled and hit each other when people fell in love, we cooed like a studio audience the first time Tony sang to Maria. Good theater kids would’ve sat quietly, enjoyed the music, and be swept away by real actors singing and dancing.

Clearly, I was not a good theater kid.

But then, Anita swept onstage in her purple satin dress. And I was …show more content…
Over and over again, I was told growing up that life in the arts was impossible, that there were no jobs in theater, that if that’s the life I wanted, I would be penniless and living in a box or on my parent’s charity. College wasn’t in the cards for me, since we couldn’t afford it and I wasn’t a good enough student to get scholarship, so instead I packed my bags and shipped off to Florida to work for the best entertainment company I could find- The Walt Disney Company. Disney took me in with open arms and after working 40 hours a week at minimum wage for two years, I decided that cost be damned, I was headed back to school (there’s only so long that everything stays magical when you have to eat ramen for dinner every

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Asked the Jurors to Discuss This for Just an Hour; Won’t “Send a Boy Off to Die Without Talking About It First” • Made Each Small Point of His Persuasion Very Easy to Accept and as Logical as Possible so None of the

...The Danger of a Single Story - Transcript Courtesy of TED By Chimamanda Adichie Transcript: I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the single story." I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader. And what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. (Laughter) And they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. (Laughter) Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow. We ate mangoes. And we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because...

Words: 2889 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

A Life of a Teenager

...A Life of a Teenager I would of never thought that my early childhood into late childhood be the way that it was and me turning out to be Ok. I made many dreams of going to school to make something of myself, like being a model and a lawyer, but the way we plan our future doesn’t always work that way. In this paper I will tell you a little more about myself and how I became the strong women I am today. My life growing up was a tough path to travel. Learning and developing adulthood in my childhood was very tough. Although I think of my family as a little dysfunctional I do remember some good times. I remember when I was in the 4th grade (about 9 years old) we lived in West Virginia about 20 min from my grandparents. Every weekend we would go there to have lunch or just to see if my grandparents would need us to do anything for them. On Sunday’s we would all go to church with them, my grandparent are faithful church goers, after church we would meet at my grandparents house to fix a big lunch. Some friends of the family would join us; the kids would play in the yard. I can remember many of the weekends, I would stay to help them, mainly because I didn’t want to home. I remember, one summer we all help build an apartment over their garage for my great grandmother, because she no longer could live by herself. My parents, I mean my mother and step father, was there that weekend to help with the apartment. Around this time in my...

Words: 2686 - Pages: 11

Free Essay

Dual Identity in Mohsin Hamid's the Reluctant Fundamentalist by Daryoosh Hayati

...Journal of Subcontinent Researches University of Sistan and Baluchestan Vol. 3, No.7, summer 2011 (p.p 31-52) East meets West: a Study of Dual Identity in Mohsin Hamid’s the Reluctant Fundamentalist Abstract This essay will present a postcolonial study of how Eastern identity and Western identity clash in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani- American novelist, and make the character of the protagonist a glocal one, (A mixture of global and local), a term newly coined by Postcolonial scholars to show the ever clashing mixture of global and local dualities in immigrants’ personalities. The basis for this research paper is the postcolonial theories of Edward Said, Fanon and Homi K. Bhabha. The aim is to question simply and sardonically the human cost of empire building, moreover it is discussed how the people in a totally alien culture are faced with different cultural predicaments, dilemmas as well as contradictions threatening their identity. Identity is supposed to be stable, while as this novel indicates, it is more of glocal identity which is at risk due to the cultural conflicts, as a result of which identity and ethnicity are subjected to change for the benefit of the hegemony. In line with Edward Said’s: “the East writes back” it is shown how this novel is a reaction to the discourse of colonization from the Pakistani side (which stands for the East) and welcomes de-colonization. Moreover it reflects the laments of the author for the terrorist label...

Words: 7519 - Pages: 31

Premium Essay

How Children Should Be Raised

...den 1. juni 2OL2 kl. 9.00 - 14.00 Side 1 af 12 sider Answer either A or B A The texts in section A focus on how children should be raised. Write a paper (700-1000 words) in which you answer the following questions. Answer the questions separately. 1. 2. 3. Give an account of childraising principles as presented in the three texts. How does A.S. Neill engage the reader in text 3? Give examples from the text. Taking your starting point in one of the texts, discuss how children should be raised. Texts Page 2 1. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, "Why I love my strict Chinese mom", a newspaper report by Mandy Stadtmiller from The New York Posl website,2}ll Kate Loveys, "Let them eat pizza: Parenting guru's recipe for bringing up children", a newspaper article from The Daily Mail website, May 16,20lI . 2. . 5 a J "Summerhill's General Policy Statement", an extract from A.S. Neill's book Summerhill a radical approach to child reåring, 1960 7 B Write an essay (700-1000 words) in which you analyse and interpret Debi Alper's short story "How Lucky You Are". Your essay must include the following points: - the main theme - a characterization of Max and Ishraqi - the way the short story is structured - Max's relationship with his parents - the setting Têxt Debi Alper, "How Lucky You Are", a short story, 2010 Page 8 Side 2 af 12 sider A TEXT 1 SoPhia Chua-Rubenfeld Why I love mY strict Chinese mom 18-year-oldSophiaChua-Rubenfeldsayshermother...

Words: 4822 - Pages: 20

Free Essay

Pe Sba

...Cooper Creek’s newest dad One minute, Keeton West is a confirmed bachelor and bull rider who lives out of a suitcase. The next, he’s the single dad of a baby he didn’t know existed. Now back in his hometown, everyone remembers the tragedy that changed his—and Sophie Cooper’s—lives forever. He desperately needs Sophie’s help with little Lucy. But spending time with Keeton seems to remind Sophie of all she lost. She won’t get close to another bull rider. Yet one sweet baby girl has her own way of bringing two hearts together. “What am I going to do with her, Sophie?” Keeton asked. “I’d say the same thing parents have done with babies for hundreds of years. Take her home and raise her.” “I’m a bull rider. I’m on the road almost fifty percent of the time. I’m living in a house that isn’t even livable.” Bull rider. That reminder had Sophie stepping back in her car, away from him, away from the tug on her heart and back into her shell. “Yes, well, I’d say you’d better get it livable.” “You could help me.” “I did. I changed the nastiest diaper in the history of diapers.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m late.” “We have to talk about the land.” “Later.” “Dinner?” He leaned in, holding tight to Lucy. “Nope. I don’t date bull riders.” She started her car and reached to close the door. He stood there, not moving. “I’m not asking you out.” Ouch. That hurt a little, for some crazy reason. “Good, I’m not accepting.” “Fine, I’ll see you later,” he said with...

Words: 57230 - Pages: 229

Premium Essay

Cast Iron Kings

...high-bouncing lover, I must have you!’ —THOMAS PARKE D’INVILLIERS  The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 I n my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my faFree eBooks at Planet eBook.com  ther snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense...

Words: 49879 - Pages: 200

Premium Essay

As English

...AS English Language [pic] [pic] [pic] Fiction style models and tasks – 2012/2013 Style Model Workbook Style models are examples of a type of writing used to give you an idea of the features used when adapting a particular style and form. As you will be required to include a fiction and non-fiction annotated style model as part of your coursework folder we have compiled a selection of materials to give you a head start. The two booklets (one fiction, one non-fiction) will contain the type of extracts you should be looking for and the questions that accompany them will help you to annotate the materials appropriately. You will be given some of the extracts to study in class and some to complete as homework tasks. There may be some materials that you haven’t been directed to by your teachers, these will make very good additional preparation and you should look at these in your own time. All the resources, and some additional style models, can be found in the AS Language section of Moodle. AS LANGUAGE COURSEWORK You must keep all work during the production of the coursework in your folder. You will need all drafts and style models for part of your final grade. Criteria • Two pieces of your own writing • Each piece must have a different audience and purpose • You should write with a specific genre in mind • Pieces should be designed with a real publication in mind • Two...

Words: 28420 - Pages: 114

Free Essay

How to Get Rich

...▼How to Get Rich ◄ 2 ► ▼How to Get Rich Contents Title Page Dedication Introduction Five Billion Reasons Why You Should Read This Book PART I The Donald J. Trump School of Business and Management PART II Your Personal Apprenticeship (Career Advice from The Donald) PART III Money, Money, Money, Money PART IV The Secrets of Negotiation PART V The Trump Lifestyle ◄ 3 ► ▼How to Get Rich PART VI Inside The Apprentice Acknowledgments Appendix Behind the Scenes at the Trump Organization About the Author Also by Donald J. Trump Copyright ◄ 4 ► ▼How to Get Rich To my parents, Mary and Fred Trump ◄ 5 ► ▼How to Get Rich The Mother of All Advice Trust in God and be true to yourself. —Mary Trump, my mother When I look back, that was great advice, concise and wise at once. I didn’t really get it at first, but because it sounded good, I stuck to it. Later I realized how comprehensive this is—how to keep your bases covered while thinking about the big picture. It’s good advice no matter what your business or lifestyle. —DJT ◄ 6 ► ▼How to Get Rich TRUMP How to Get Rich ◄ 7 ► ▼How to Get Rich Introduction Five Billion Reasons Why You Should Read This Book A lot has happened to us all since 1987. That’s the year The Art of the Deal was published and became the bestselling business book of the decade, with over three million copies in print. (Business Rule #1: If you don’t tell people about your success, they probably won’t know...

Words: 53431 - Pages: 214

Free Essay

Download a Paper

...▼How to Get Rich ◄ 2 ► ▼How to Get Rich Contents Title Page Dedication Introduction Five Billion Reasons Why You Should Read This Book PART I The Donald J. Trump School of Business and Management PART II Your Personal Apprenticeship (Career Advice from The Donald) PART III Money, Money, Money, Money PART IV The Secrets of Negotiation PART V The Trump Lifestyle ◄ 3 ► ▼How to Get Rich PART VI Inside The Apprentice Acknowledgments Appendix Behind the Scenes at the Trump Organization About the Author Also by Donald J. Trump Copyright ◄ 4 ► ▼How to Get Rich To my parents, Mary and Fred Trump ◄ 5 ► ▼How to Get Rich The Mother of All Advice Trust in God and be true to yourself. —Mary Trump, my mother When I look back, that was great advice, concise and wise at once. I didn’t really get it at first, but because it sounded good, I stuck to it. Later I realized how comprehensive this is—how to keep your bases covered while thinking about the big picture. It’s good advice no matter what your business or lifestyle. —DJT ◄ 6 ► ▼How to Get Rich TRUMP How to Get Rich ◄ 7 ► ▼How to Get Rich Introduction Five Billion Reasons Why You Should Read This Book A lot has happened to us all since 1987. That’s the year The Art of the Deal was published and became the bestselling business book of the decade, with over three million copies in print. (Business Rule #1: If you don’t tell people about your success...

Words: 53431 - Pages: 214

Premium Essay

Does Rap Music Misrepresent African Americans

...Mustoe Does Rap music Misrepresent African Americans? There are many genera’s in today’s music world. Depending on who a person is, and what their emotions may be, there will always be a song or genera that one can relate to. Some music helps us relax, while others help us to get pumped up. Other music helps us study while some get us ready to party. Music can create closeness with a significant other while sometimes it can relate to our sorrows of a breakup. It can make us happy when we are sad, while in curtain circumstances make us sad when we are happy. Music can take over our thoughts and emotions that create a story we can relate to or a story we are unfamiliar with. It can take us down a street we have never been before. In some aspects this could be a problem. Some listeners might think all country singers are hicks from the south or mid west. Many might assume every punk rocker is a rebellious Goth. So if these presumptions can be made, what is there to stop people from letting a genera of music represent a certain race in our society today? In the past, music was limited by certain branches of music that could air on the radio and one genera in particular, rap, had to fight its way through the music industry to be heard. Its roots came from the hip-hop culture which includes rapping, graffiti, break dancing, DJing (audio mixing or scratching) ect. After rap was recognized, over the years, changes within the music industry and what the media focuses on, I feel...

Words: 2681 - Pages: 11

Free Essay

Grease Analysis

... is really the story of America’s tumultuous crossing over from the 50s to the 60s, throwing over repression and tradition for freedom and adventure (and a generous helping of cultural chaos), a time when the styles and culture of the disengaged and disenfranchised became overpowering symbols of teenage power and autonomy. Originally a rowdy, dangerous, over-sexed, and insightful piece of alternative theatre, Grease was inspired by the rule-busting success of Hair and shows like it, rejecting the trappings of other Broadway musicals for a more authentic, more visceral, more radical theatre experience that revealed great cultural truths about America. An experience largely forgotten by most productions of the show today. Like Hair before it and The Rocky Horror Show which would come a year later, Grease is a show about repression versus freedom in American sexuality, about the clumsy, tentative, but clearly emerging sexual freedom of the late 1950s, seen through the lens of the middle of the Sexual Revolution in the 1970s. It’s about the near carnal passion 1950s teenagers felt for their rock and roll, the first art form that actually changed human sexuality. (The phrase rock and roll was originally African American urban slang for sexual intercourse, going as far back as the 1920s, and it made its way onto many rhythm and blues recordings before the 1950s.) As theatre, Grease finds its roots in the rawness, the rowdiness, the lack of polish that made Hair and other experimental...

Words: 13750 - Pages: 55

Premium Essay

The Great Gatsby

...you!’ —THOMAS PARKE D’INVILLIERS  The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 I n my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my faFree eBooks at Planet eBook.com  ther snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly...

Words: 49879 - Pages: 200

Free Essay

The Kite Runner

...book is dedicated to Haris and Farah, both the _noor_ of my eyes, and to the children of Afghanistan. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to the following colleagues for their advice, assistance, or support: Dr. Alfred Lerner, Don Vakis, Robin Heck, Dr. Todd Dray, Dr. Robert Tull, and Dr. Sandy Chun. Thanks also to Lynette Parker of East San Jose Community Law Center for her advice about adoption procedures, and to Mr. Daoud Wahab for sharing his experiences in Afghanistan with me. I am grateful to my dear friend Tamim Ansary for his guidance and support and to the gang at the San Francisco Writers Workshop for their feed back and encouragement. I want to thank my father, my oldest friend and the inspiration for all that is noble in Baba; my mother who prayed for me and did nazr at every stage of this book’s writing; my aunt for buying me books when I was young. Thanks go out to Ali, Sandy, Daoud, Walid, Raya, Shalla, Zahra, Rob, and Kader for reading my stories. I want to thank Dr. and Mrs. Kayoumy--my other parents--for their warmth and unwavering support. I must thank my agent and friend, Elaine Koster, for her wisdom, patience, and gracious ways, as well as Cindy Spiegel, my keen-eyed and judicious editor who helped me unlock so many doors in this tale. And I would like to thank Susan Petersen Kennedy for taking a chance on this book and the hardworking staff at Riverhead for laboring over it. Last, I don’t know how to thank my lovely wife, Roya--to whose opinion I am addicted--for...

Words: 108311 - Pages: 434

Free Essay

Fathers Story

...N A R R AT I V E M AG A Z I N E .C O M A Father’s Story A S T O R Y by Andre Dubus Andre Dubus, novelist, essayist, and short story writer, was born into a Cajun-Irish Catholic family in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1936. A Marine Corps captain, he left the military to pursue an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and subsequently lived as a writer and teacher of writing. Dubus was best appreciated for short fiction, receiving the PEN/Malamud Award, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rea Award. “A Father’s Story” is reprinted from Selected Stories (Vintage, 1989). Dubus died at home in Massachusetts in 1999. M Y N A M E I S Luke Ripley, and here is what I call my life: I own a stable of thirty horses, and I have young people who teach riding, and we board some horses too. This is in northeastern Massachusetts. I have a barn with an indoor ring, and outside I’ve got two fenced-in rings and a pasture that ends at a woods with trails. I call it my life because it looks like it is, and people I know call it that, but it’s a life I can get away from when I hunt and fish, and some nights after dinner when I sit in the dark in the front room and listen to opera. The room faces the lawn and the road, a two-lane country road. When cars come around the curve northwest of the house, they light up the lawn for an instant, the leaves of the maple out by the road and the hemlock closer to the window. Then I’m alone again, or I’d appear to be...

Words: 10463 - Pages: 42

Premium Essay

Perseverance In Greg Mortenson's Three Cups Of Tea

...There he discovered that the few male children who attended "school" sat outside in the brisk cold, and carved letters with branches in the mud. The villagers couldn't afford a full-time teacher, let alone a building. However, these people didn't hesitate to give Mortenson, someone at the time no more to them than a stranger, their best blankets, and precious sugar. Moved by their kindness, this was the tipping point when Mortenson lost interest in his own climbing goals and shifted his focus entirely on improving the lives of the people of Pakistan. He promised to build them a school on his return. Mortenson emphasized how poor the another side of the world is and how ignorant we, as westerners, often are. He learned that in Korphe, "In every home, at least one family member suffered from goiters or cataracts. The children, whose ginger hair he had admired, owed their coloring to a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor." He then inspired the readers by incorporating his experience back in his hometown Minnesota, where he wrote five hundred letters addressing the prosperous and amiable people of the United States, asking for financial help with establishing his first school. In addition, he gave up his own personal relationships and resorted to living in his van which he called La Bamba in order invest as much money as he could into his project. Mortenson translated the importance of perseverance by addressing the many times he failed but advanced. This includes...

Words: 2025 - Pages: 9