Born in Brooklyn in 1973. Kings County Hospital, April, one of those cold spring weeks where it can’t decide if it’s still winter. My parents Curtis and Shirley had moved up from Georgia a few years earlier, looking for work, looking for something, and they found it for a while. My dad worked factory jobs. My mom worked retail, customer service, whatever paid. We lived in a walk-up that always smelled like whatever the neighbors were cooking, which was fine because the neighbors could cook. My dad worked at a factory that made parts for something, I never really understood what, and he came home tired most days but he always had time to fix whatever was broken. That’s what I remember most. Something breaks, dad fixes it. Faucet leaking, dad fixes it. Door won’t close right, dad fixes i...