 My father was a pharmacist who formulated his own cough medicines, syrups for various ailments, and creams for an assortment of skin conditions. Once a month he went to New York City’s Chinatown to buy herbs, tinctures, and spices that he used to make the preparations. After he bought what he needed he would go to a small local restaurant and eat lunch. When he told me the menus were in Chinese and the waiters spoke no English, I asked, “How do you know what to order?”
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 In the spring of 1966, when I decided to get an MA in theatre, I learned that one of the non-negotiable requirements for admission was passing the GRE (Graduate Record Exam). I’d been out of school for years and dreaded having to take any exam, much less one that determined my fitness for graduate school. I kept putting it off until I ran out of time. I had one last chance to take it if I wanted to enroll for even a single course in the fall of 1966.
 In 1972 I attended an annual theatre conference where committee meetings were more than a little contentious—not only about performance issues, but also about smoking/not smoking. Despite the approaches some of us took to try to solve problems, there seemed to be no way to end the acrimony. The meeting I was attending ended on a particularly discordant note. I wished I knew a way to bring the warring parties together but the meeting was over. I left to go to my next event—a massage workshop!
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July 2023
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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