“ Nobody wants a spotted child“, the guardians at the orphanage tell her. Number twenty-seven is rejected by twelve families – on account of her vitiligo, the discolored patches on her skin that her relatives used to taunt her with as “devil’s child” and “leopard”. All the children have their pictures taken to show potential adoptive parents in the United States, and the orphanage hands the selected children photographs of their to-be adoptive families. At the orphanage, she makes friends with her namesake, Mabinty Suma aka number twenty-six, since the two children share a mat. Her uncle ultimately leaves her at an orphanage, only when the director offers him some money to leave the child in his care, rather than sell her off elsewhere. Her relatives who take her in do not want to “waste time, food or money on a girl child” and decide to sell her off to plantation owners. This is the story of her flight from an orphan in a war-torn country to star ballerina in the United States, from “too ugly to adopt” to a world class dancer.īorn and brought up in war-torn Sierra Leone, her father was shot and killed by the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in the civil war of the 1990s, and her mother passed away from Lassa fever. But before she was Michaela DePrince, she was Mabinty Bangura, or rather “number twenty-seven” – her identity in an orphanage in Sierra Leone. This is a book about Michaela DePrince – a ballet dancer who holds the distinction of being the youngest professional prima ballerina, at age seventeen. I am neither Mabinty Bangura nor Michaela DePrince.

A professional ballerina…is that really me? Then the music starts and I step on to the stage. I flex my feet at the ankles one at a time, extend my legs and point my toes to check that the ribbons of my pointe shoes are securely tied and tucked. A silver tiara studded with crystal rhinestones crowns my hair. “I stand in the wings, dressed in a lush black tutu embellished with black feathers and blood-red flowers. Authors – Michaela DePrince and Elaine DePrince

Michaela deprince book