“ I feel like I belong everywhere.”
finding
PAMELA NEWKIRK
MY SEARCH FOR A REMARKABLE WOMAN WHO WAS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
By ANGELA D. BLOUNT
NEW YORK- It was a crisp Tuesday morning beneath a gray New York sky, the kind of morning when the city seems to come to life before you have had the chance to catch your breath.
People hurried about their tasks. Cars pressed forward. Somewhere beneath the streets, a subway train carried hundreds of people toward wherever they were going.
Beneath a blue-and-white awning, inside a small café tucked on a lower Manhattan street, Pamela Newkirk sat across from me. For a woman who had spent much of her life asking other people to tell the truth about themselves, she seemed almost surprised that someone wanted to hear hers.
“ I feel like I belong everywhere.”
“ Yeah, but I don’ t know why you want to interview me,” she responded when I thanked her for agreeing to talk with me.. Why me?” She said it simply. No performance. No rehearsed humility.
It was a question I had spent months preparing to answer.
20