Who is... MIA DEPRINCE? Separated from their families by the civil war in Sierra Leone, two little girls with the first name of Mabinty were placed in an orphanage and became very best friends. The friends became sisters in June 1999, when they were four years old and adopted by the same American family. Because of the confusion of having two little girls with the same name, their adoptive parents changed their names to Mia DePrince and Michaela DePrince. The two sisters did everything together, including taking ballet and piano lessons, but soon their different personalities emerged. Unlike Michaela, Mia’s passion was not ballet. Mia fell in love with the piano in the living room of her parents’ home, and the…show more content… That was the first time that I ever saw straight hair! At first I wanted my hair to grow long and silky like the hair of all the white models on shampoo advertisements. My mother worked hard at convincing me that my hair was beautiful. She made all kinds of pretty embellishments for my hair, and that worked for a while…at least until I was eleven and entered middle school.
As an adolescent I began clamoring for hair extensions and weaves. I quickly learned that hair extensions hurt, and weaves made a girl’s head itch like crazy. Having hair straightened was even worse. Straightening, extensions and weaves are tough on hair and made my hair thinner. Also, having them done professionally was very expensive.
Finally, at the age of seventeen, I came to terms with the fact that I was a black girl with nappy hair, or as my mother euphemistically called it, “Hair with sweet, itty bitty curls.” That is when I decided to keep my hair cut short and natural. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t toss my head and feel my hair sway about my shoulders, like the models on those shampoo commercials. I could achieve that effect with a…show more content… Then, one day I heard on the news that Phoebe Prince, a high school student in Hadley, Massachusetts, had committed suicide after three months of intense bullying. I didn’t want that to be me, so I shared all of my anguish with my mother. About two weeks later my life was threatened. When I reported the threat to the school administrators, they didn’t believe me. When describing the reactions of my tormentors to the accusation, one administrator said, “They looked at me with faces of pure innocence, so I knew that they weren’t guilty.” Years later I would recall his description and use the words, “Faces of pure innocence,” in a song in my album IN GOLDEN LIGHT. That song is “Subtle as a Gunshot,” and I wrote it as a protest against the failure of authorities to recognize and stem the tide of the bullying that causes so many students to take their own lives. I was fortunate. When I told my mother that I could not attend a high school where the adults refused to protect me, she agreed. As a home schooled student I received a superb education rich in music and performance arts. Most importantly, I felt
