
A Black Ballerina From Sierra Leone
Michaela DePrince, born with vitiligo and deemed cursed by those around her, including an uncle, lost her father to rebel soldiers and her mother to starvation before she turned four. She was soon placed in an orphanage and assigned the “number 27” out of 27 children, a ranking suggesting she was last among others and least likely to be chosen for anything good. But even amidst these flooding chaos, a spark survived.