My mom had started to go to work when I was nine or ten so I was aware of women trying to find their own identities by working. But I was still influenced by men to such an extreme. I wanted to play their games and wanted to compete in their world and be like them.
I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.
