Standing before the church congregation, little Marguerite Johnson realized that everyone was looking at her, and that she wasn't a white girl with long blonde hair. As she remembered that she was a girl with dark skin, a gap between her teeth, and kinky dark hair, she struggled to remember the words of the poem she'd memorized for Easter. It was no use. As Marguerite ran towards the door of the church, "a green persimmon, or it could have been a lemon, caught me between the legs and squeezed. I tasted the sour on my tongue and felt it in the back of my mouth. Then ... the sting was burning down my legs and into my Sunday socks." Marguerite Johnson--the girl who would grow up to become a performer who flaunted her beauty, power and grace on stages all over the world--the girl who would become a writer...